Smokin’

I just tried smoking for the first time.

I know, I know, I probably shouldn’t, but all the cool kids were doing it and I wanted to see what it was like. Don’t tell my mum, but I kinda liked it.

Anyway, we were round the back of my house and I’d got this Cherry, so we thought we’d give it a go. If you don’t try it you’ll never know.

I should be clear – this is not an instructional post on smoking meat, as there are loads of good internet resources written by people who actually know how to do it. I read quite a bit online and picked the bits I liked from various sources.

I used a basic Weber kettle barbecue, which I lit charcoal on one side of and placed a tray of water on the other side. Once the coals were ready I placed a couple of handfuls of soaked cherry chips on top and then positioned the whole spatchcocked chicken over the water tray (not over the hot coals)

I marinaded the chicken in onion, garlic, rosemary, thyme, lemon, olive oil, vermouth and salt and pepper for about 4 hours. I decided to give it half an hour in the oven just to get it hot before it went onto the grill, another time I would feel confident enough to skip this step and just go longer on the grill. In the end it went for about 45 mins on the grill, with the lid on.

The result is a super-juicy chicken with a mahogany coloured skin and a nice smokey flavour. We served it with freshly made barbecue flatbreads, little gem lettuce from the garden and a home made tangy barbecue sauce

As you can see, I prefer to roll my own.

Ed