How to cook hot smoked chicken in a smokehouse. How to marinate chicken for smoking. Cold smoked turkey roll

Hot smoked chicken is an independent dish, an appetizer, and an ingredient in salads or soups. Finding it in a store today is not a problem: many chains sell delicious smoked carcasses.

But a home-cooked dish is healthier and tastier: fresh, without carcinogenic liquid smoke and other “chemicals”.

In addition, you can use different recipes for hot smoked chicken and get a new interesting dish every time. You won’t get tired of this delicacy, unlike store-bought ones.

If you have a hot smoker, the chicken will cook in just 40-60 minutes (butchered). It's easy to prepare this delicacy at home.

Preparing chicken for hot smoking

The question of how to prepare chicken for hot smoking is relevant. There are no trifles here, since this stage depends on:

• Will the chicken be salted?
• Will it smoke evenly?
• and how long will it take for it to be ready.

To ensure that the chicken smokes evenly, it is important to cut it into pieces of similar size. You can smoke wings, thighs/drums, individual breasts, the whole bird or cut in half.

Important: small pieces will cook faster than large ones. For example, wings are smoked for 40 minutes, and a whole chicken is smoked for 1.5-3 hours.

Preparing chicken for hot smoking:

1. Before smoking, the chicken is gutted.

2. Rinse thoroughly.

3. Cut.

4. Marinate in brine or rub with spices.

If you smoke whole chicken, it is better to use a special nozzle. With it, the smoke will be distributed throughout the smokehouse, and the bird will be smoked evenly both inside and outside. In addition, the chicken attachment simplifies the preparation of chicken for smoking and reduces the time it takes for the carcass to cook.

If you want to smoke a bird quickly, you will have to cut it up. Remove the backbone and large bones: thymus and sternum, and pound the resulting chicken halves between 2 cutting boards. This will soften your joints and bones. You can beat the chicken with a culinary hammer, a hatchet or any heavy object. To prevent splashes from flying in different directions, half carcasses are first placed in a plastic bag.

Marinade for hot smoked chicken

Before sending the chicken to the smokehouse, it needs to be salted or marinated in one way or another:

dry method;

wet method;

injection.

How you decide to marinate chicken for hot smoking will determine its cooking time and the duration of salting. If you don’t want to wait a long time, it’s better to syringe the carcass. If you are afraid that the chicken will be salted unevenly, prepare the brine. Otherwise, the dry method will do.

With the dry salting method, it is enough to thickly rub the bird with salt (20 g per 1 kg of meat) and spices, place it in a plastic bag and leave for 1.5-2 hours.

Best paired with chicken

• coriander;

• rosemary;

• black pepper;

  khmeli-suneli;

For the wet method, you need to prepare a brine. There are many options for marinades - choose any one.

Popular marinade recipes for hot smoked chicken

Below are the basic recipes. You can follow them or use your favorite chicken brine as a base and experiment with seasonings. By adding spices to a standard recipe to your liking, you will make a familiar product unusual.

Simple marinade

All marinades are prepared at the rate of 1.5 liters of water per 1 kg of chicken. The simplest recipe is a salt solution. To prepare it, you will need 1.5 cups of table salt and 1.5 liters of water. You can add a little vinegar to taste.

The chicken should be left in the resulting brine for at least 24 hours. The bird must be kept in a cool place.

Spicy marinade

For 1.5 liters of warm boiled water take the following ingredients:

salt - 100 g;

• black pepper;

  Bay leaf.

Dissolve the salt in water, add seasonings and bring the mixture to a boil - the marinade is ready. When it has cooled to room temperature, you can lay out the chicken and place a press on top. Leave the bird in this brine for 18-25 hours.

Spicy marinade

To make the usual taste of hot smoked chicken unusual, you can slightly change the brine for marinating the bird by adding cinnamon, a little sugar and aromatic herbs to taste. Some experienced smokers recommend juniper berries or ground ginger, and replace the salt with soy sauce.

With the wet method, the chicken is kept in brine for at least 18 hours. In this case, you need to regularly turn the pieces or half carcasses if the bird is cut up.

When there is no time to wait, the bird is injected with marinade. Punctures should be made every 3-5 cm. Since the brine is introduced directly into the thickness of the chicken meat, the marinating time is reduced to 1-2 hours.

How to smoke chicken in a hot smoker

To smoke chicken evenly in a hot smoker, you need to follow several rules.

1. Before hot smoking, salted or marinated chicken must be dried in air for 1-2 hours. If this is not done, moisture will not allow smoke to penetrate inside the carcass. A “shell” is formed on the surface of the chicken, otherwise it is called “hardening”. Because of it, the inside of the bird will remain raw, and the outside will be covered with a hard crust.

2. The chicken is placed on the smokehouse grates so that the smoke evenly envelops each piece. If possible, it is better to hang half carcasses or pieces.

3. To smoke a whole chicken you will need a special attachment. Without it, it will be difficult to smoke the carcass evenly.

4. For hot smoking chicken, 1-2 handfuls of wood chips are enough. Wood shavings should only cover the bottom of the smokehouse in a thin layer, otherwise the smoke will be too thick.

If you smoke chicken in a hot smoker according to these rules, it will cook evenly and turn out tender, without bitterness or an unpleasant aftertaste.

Hot smoked chicken temperature

The temperature changes when hot smoking chicken. You need to keep an eye on it during the cooking process.

If you took the whole carcass, maintain the temperature in the smokehouse at about 80 ºС for the first hour, then reduce it to 40 ºС and leave for another 1-2 hours.

The halves cook in about 1 hour. In the first 10 minutes, the heat should be at maximum, and when smoke appears from the smokehouse, reduce the heat to minimum. Now the smoldering only needs to be maintained.

The wings are cooked at 60-80 ºС according to the same principle: first, maximum heat - then heat to minimum.

How long to smoke hot smoked chicken in a smokehouse

At home, hot smoking chicken in a smokehouse lasts from 40 minutes to 1.5-3 hours. But these are only approximate data.

The time for hot smoking chicken varies depending on various factors:

• size of the pieces (whole chicken takes longer to smoke);
• salting duration;
• age of the bird (the older it is, the meat is tougher and, accordingly, cooking will take longer.)

There is no exact answer to the question of how long to smoke hot smoked chicken in a smokehouse. It is necessary to check the readiness of the bird from time to time.

A golden crust that is dry and evenly colored is a sign that the chicken is smoked.

But if you doubt its readiness, pierce the carcass in the thickest place and see what the juice flows out. If it is transparent, the chicken is ready.

Before serving, remove the skin from the bird. It has absorbed a lot of harmful substances, ash, fumes and is definitely not worth using. Don’t forget to also “ventilate” the freshly smoked chicken in the fresh air for several hours.

Hot smoked chicken cooked in a smokehouse is healthier than store-bought chicken. You do not use liquid smoke, preservatives or flavor enhancers, and are also confident in the quality and freshness of the bird. To make this homemade delicacy tastier, use chilled rather than frozen poultry.

Try proven popular marinades, experiment and create your own recipes for hot smoked chicken in a smokehouse!

Due to numerous requests from visitors to our site, today we will consider hot smoking chicken in detail. All stages from salting the chicken to smoking at home will be photographed.

So, what do we need to smoke a chicken? Of course, the chicken itself is better to take a broiler chicken. For salting, let's take the already tested recipe for wet salting for smoking. We used it last time to smoke pork belly, it turned out very tasty. You need to take: 1 glass of salt, 3 liters 200 ml. water, bay leaf, black peppercorns, 3 cloves of garlic, spices for barbecue (you can take spices for cooking chicken, I just didn’t have any) 2 tablespoons.

Place spices, garlic, bay leaves, pepper, and salt into water and bring the brine to a boil. Boil for 2 - 3 minutes and turn off. Cool the brine to room temperature and drop the chicken into it. You need to trim off excess fat in the tail area. And of course, before salting, the chicken must be washed inside and out.

Our brine strength is the same as for salting pork layers, 100 g. salt per 1 liter of water. But the chicken in the brine should be in the refrigerator for 15 - 20 hours. This time is enough for the chicken to be fully salted. We were in brine for 20 hours.

Then remove the chicken from the brine and rinse with running water. We hang it for a couple of hours to drain excess moisture from the glass. Ideally, the chicken should be kept in a draft to dry it out. But we didn't have time for this. Wipe the chicken with a napkin.

The chicken was cut into two parts before smoking. This was done only to save space in the smokehouse. After this, we tie both parts with twine. We pour about 2 - 3 handfuls of alder sawdust into the smokehouse. We put a tray to drain the fat, hang the chicken, and close the smokehouse lid.

We put the smokehouse on maximum heat, after 10 minutes we reduce the heat to moderate. I have an electric stove. The maximum position was 4, the rest of the smoking took place at 3. Hot smoking chicken at home lasts 1.5 hours.

Shish kebab is shish kebab, but I want something new. Spring May Days and the first trips into nature have begun. and we have already fried, . It's time to tell you how to hot smoke chicken at home, which turns out simply amazing.

The only negative is that hot smoked chicken at home (recipe below) requires much more time than regular kebab, but it's worth it.

Any chicken parts are suitable for this delicious dish - wings, drumsticks, thigh or breast. If you have a large smokehouse, you can smoke a whole chicken. Our family loves any part of the chicken, but since I have a small smoker, the whole thing doesn’t fit there, and smaller parts smoke faster.

When I said that homemade hot smoked chicken will take a little longer, this means several days. Yes, yes, several days! In order for our chicken to be juicy and tasty, smoked and cooked to the very bones, it must be marinated for several days.

Preparation

I purchased chilled chicken thighs in advance, rinsed them with clean water, skimmed off excess fat and pulled out the remaining feathers. Place them in a deep bowl and make the marinade.

Peel the garlic, rinse with water and cut into slices. Place garlic in bowl with chicken. Then everything is according to your taste. Mix salt and your favorite spices suitable for chicken and also add to the bowl with the chicken thighs. Thoroughly mix the chicken with seasonings and garlic. Fill with water so that it just covers the product.

By the way, you can put a plate on top and put heavy pressure on it. Then the chicken will be better saturated with the marinade.

Preparing hot smoked chicken thighs is a long process and we will spend the most time on the marinating process.

Cover with a lid and place in the refrigerator for three days. During this time, the meat will be thoroughly saturated with salt and spices, this will make it more tasty, juicy and speed up the hot smoking of chicken thighs.

So, time is up and the day has come when we will smoke hot smoked chicken thighs. It is necessary to remove the chicken from the marinade in advance and place it on a wire rack to drain excess liquid, otherwise it will fill with sawdust. I think 35-45 minutes will be enough.

During this time, we will prepare the sawdust. I use alder, but it's a matter of taste. Pour the required amount of sawdust into a bowl and fill it with warm water for 20 minutes. Next, prepare the smokehouse, light a fire under it and pour wet sawdust into it. We wait until the sawdust begins to smoke a little and place a tray on it to collect the fat that will drain from the thighs during the smoking process. If this is not done, the fat will burn and the finished product will taste like burning.

Place the grate in the smoker and place the chicken on it. We close the smokehouse with a lid, now we will constantly maintain the fire under it. The fire should not be very strong, otherwise the sawdust will quickly dry out and burn, but we need it to smolder slowly. The process will take from one to two hours.

While you are hot smoking chicken at home, you can start preparing a delicious side dish, for example. I'll be honest, cooking the chicken took longer than I thought it would. The potatoes cooked faster and we ate them very quickly.

That's all. Hot smoked chicken thighs (homemade recipe) are completely ready. As a matter of fact, that’s all the wisdom on how to cook hot smoked chicken in a smokehouse. Agree, it’s not that difficult, it’s just long.

Serve with vegetables and any side dish, if you didn’t eat it like we did while the chicken was smoking. Bon appetit!

Ingredients

• 8 pcs – chicken thigh;
• 1 tsp – salt;
• 2-3 tsp – spices to taste;
• Water;
• Sawdust – deciduous trees birch, alder, cherry, apple tree;
• Smokehouse.

Chicken meat is much more tender than others, so if the chicken in the smokehouse is cooked correctly, then even an ordinary dinner will turn into a real holiday.

Experienced cooks know that smoking chicken is possible in two ways: hot and cold. The first option is the fastest, it will take several hours, and the chicken will be tender and juicy, since the processing process takes place at a high temperature, more than one hundred degrees.

If you want to cook chicken using the second method, you will have to prepare yourself for a long wait. Because the recipe obliges you to maintain a temperature of thirty degrees for the entire smoking period, because in this case you need to smoke the meat with smoke from a long-smoldering fire.

It turns out that it is the most profitable in terms of time and taste. Therefore, this particular cooking recipe deserves attention first of all.

Inventory preparation

The smoking chamber must be washed before starting the process. Extraneous aromas and burnt residues from the previous dish can greatly spoil the “reputation” of the prepared product, and fat that has been burned more than once is harmful to health.

You should put foil on the bottom of the smokehouse; this will allow you to get a bright, rich aroma, and the processing time will be slightly reduced. Then wood chips are poured in. Any type of wood will work, but alder, cherry or oak are best. The dish will be incredibly tasty if you use bird cherry chips.

A tray is installed on top, where the fat will drain, and then a grate, on which the chicken will be cooked.

You will definitely need a deep marinating vessel, a cutting board, and a sharp knife.

Food preparation

Thawed chicken, or better yet, chicken, should be without feathers and entrails. The carcass must be washed in running water and marinated. It is worth noting that properly marinated chicken is a guarantee of success. Therefore, the preparation technology must be followed impeccably.

The chicken is cut in half and lightly beaten with a special hammer. There is no need to pound the meat too much; crushing bones is excluded. It is only necessary to beat off so that the meat fibers can be fully saturated with the marinade, then the smoked chicken will turn out tender and juicy.

The marinade recipe is simple. It is important that the meat is soaked in it longer. It is better to keep the carcass in brine overnight and smoke it in the morning. To prepare the marinade you will need:

• 3 liters of water;
• 2 cups salt;
• a glass of granulated sugar;
• head of garlic;
• half a glass of vinegar 9%;
• Bay leaf;
• spices and herbs are added to taste.

To follow the recipe, you need to boil the water; salt and sugar dissolve much better in warm water. Garlic and herbs are finely chopped, then, together with vinegar, are added to the solution cooled to room temperature. Next, as already mentioned, the chicken is dipped in the marinade and left overnight, preferably in a cool place.

After marinating, the carcass should be ventilated. You can hang it on the street, having previously filled it with small pieces of lard and garlic using cuts in the skin.

Cooking process

Before placing the meat in the smokehouse, you need to light the fire, then heat the chamber well to 250°C. Then the chicken “settles” inside the device, belly down, and cooks there for about 4 hours, or until a food thermometer shows a temperature of 180°C in the breast area. Sometimes you need to open the lid of the smokehouse and wipe it with a cloth, as carbon deposits and soot form on it. Dripping from above, they will spoil the appetizing appearance of the golden crust with dark spots, and the recipe does not provide for this.

A shiny film on the surface of the skin indicates that the dish is ready and the chicken can be removed.

Advice from experienced chefs

To properly smoke chicken meat without making mistakes, it is recommended to use the advice of experienced professionals.

Table of chicken calorie content and nutritional content of 1 serving (approximately 600g):

Aromatic hot smoked chicken can be used as a component for other dishes (for example, for dressing salads or preparing soups), or can be served as an independent dish. And if it’s also really hot, fresh from the smokehouse, hardly anyone can refuse. 🙂 This article is a story about how to smoke chicken in a hot smoked smokehouse at home, in your kitchen or in your country house.

For hot smoking chicken in an apartment, it is better to use household smokehouses with a water seal and smoke exhaust, both factory-made and home-made. The water seal will prevent smoke from inside the smokehouse from entering the kitchen, but this pipe on the lid will release excess smoke into the window or kitchen hood:

There is a subtle point here that some people forget. If the exhaust pipe is long, then condensation will accumulate inside it - after all, the smoke cools down as it passes through it. This water must be drained away so that it does not clog the tube. For example, like this:

A very small portion of food (say, a couple of legs) can be smoked in an ordinary saucepan with a tightly closed lid, without any smoke vent. To do this, the lid of the pan must be sealed - for example, wrapped with a wet towel or foil. The second method is preferable: the towel will simply dry out after an hour of standing on the stove.

Some people use another way to seal the lid - they coat it around the edge with dough. The method is good, but there is a drawback - you also have to prepare the dough for everything. 🙂

Hot smoking of chicken in air does not require either the removal of excess smoke or the collection of condensate. You can use a large saucepan or cauldron with a lid. A lid is still needed so that the smoke remains inside the smokehouse and does not immediately fly into the sky, but it is no longer necessary to seal it.

The most convenient way to smoke chicken is in a real, large barrel smokehouse. But for this you need a summer cottage. 🙂

The easiest way (but requiring certain financial expenses) is to simply buy a ready-made smoking apparatus. There are devices designed for use in the kitchens of ordinary apartments. The simplest models, in the form of a box with a lid, have already been described above. But it is more advisable to use more technologically advanced units, with a reliable water seal, a smoke exhaust system into the kitchen hood and convenient grates for food.

Here in the photo is one of the Hanhi brand models. In fact, there is a whole range of them, there is plenty to choose from.

Marinades

Before smoking, the chicken must be prepared by salting it in a marinade. There are many brine recipes for cooking hot smoked chicken, and most likely, each owner has his own. We will list only the most popular ones here.

Recipe 1

The first marinade recipe for smoking chicken is the simplest:

• 1 liter of water;
• 1 heaped tablespoon of salt;
• 5-6 bay leaves;
• black and allspice - about 20 peas together.

And it's all. You need to heat the water, dissolve salt in it, and add spices. Cool to room temperature and ready to use.

Recipe 2

This method is more complicated than the first, but the chicken turns out more flavorful:

• 1 liter of hot water;
• 1 tablespoon salt;
• 1 teaspoon sugar;
• 3 tablespoons 3% vinegar;
• half a teaspoon each of ginger, cinnamon, coriander, black and allspice;
• 2 bay leaves;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• 2-3 juniper berries (optional and if you have them).

The preparation is the same. Heat water to a boil, dissolve salt and sugar, add spices. Do not cut the garlic, but crush it with a knife or spoon. Cool the mixture to room temperature.

Recipe 3

This recipe requires some additional steps. For 1 kilogram of chicken we take:

• 20 grams of garlic;
• 4 grams of ground black pepper.

Crush the garlic into a paste and mix with pepper. Rub the chicken inside and out with this mixture. Place the meat in a pan and pour in the following solution:

• 1 liter of water;
• 50 grams of salt;
• 10 grams of sugar;
• black peppercorns and spices to taste.

Preparation

Chicken for smoking should be taken fresh or chilled. If the carcass is large, then you can cut it into two halves along the ridge. We do not remove the skin from the chicken. If there is a lot of fat on the carcass, then you need to cut it off; It will still drain during the smoking process, so you will have less to clean the smoker afterwards.

The prepared marinade should be cooled to room temperature. Most often they do just that. But some people prefer to immerse the chicken in a still hot solution, just removed from the stove.

The chicken is completely immersed in the marinade; nothing should remain above the surface. To do this, you can put a plate on top and put pressure, for example, a jar of water. Place all this in a cool place (refrigerator) for at least a day.

After this period, the chicken is removed from the marinade, washed with water to remove excess salt and dried. To do this, it is often recommended to let the carcass rest so that all the solution drains. Or if you don’t want to wait, you can just wipe it dry with a towel.

Smoking

If you are going to smoke your chicken in a large smokehouse (for example, in a barrel) in a suspended state, then it is advisable to tie the carcass with twine. By the way, it will also be useful at the previous stage of preparation - you can use this twine to hang the carcass somewhere in a place protected from flies so that the excess marinade drains and it dries. If you hot smoke chicken in a compact household smokehouse with a grate, then you don’t have to tie the carcass.

The smoking recipe is generally the same:

1. Chips or sawdust are poured onto the bottom. Let's not forget that the best results are obtained when using alder chips; in second place in popularity are fruit tree species; on the third - other hardwoods, such as oak, aspen, willow, beech, and so on. Coniferous species cannot be used.
2. A tray is installed above the layer of wood chips to collect the draining fat. Fat should not fall on the hot bottom of the smokehouse.
3. Even higher is the grate for food. Products should be placed freely on the grill, without touching each other, so that smoke can easily circulate around.
4. The smokehouse is closed with a lid and placed on fire.

All this relative arrangement of parts must be provided for by the design of the smokehouse. If you want to make a smokehouse yourself, carefully read its structure, for example, here.

Smoking is considered to have begun when smoke begins to come out from under the lid (or it appears from the chimney tube). This will mean that smoke has completely filled the entire internal volume. From this point on, time is usually recorded.

Smoking time should be approximately one hour. Approximately, because the exact time depends greatly on your smokehouse and the air temperature. For example, in winter, outdoors, the process must be extended by 15-20 minutes. You will have to empirically determine the optimal mode for your specific device. After two or three smoking sessions, you will find the best mode for yourself. However, the general recommendation is exactly this - about one hour.