North Carolina-Style Pulled Chicken

Have you ever been to North Carolina?  I suppose some of you have, and others may even have been born there.  As for me, I've never been anywhere close to North Carolina, but I have had North Carolina-style barbecue, and it is absolutely wonderful.  The sauce is what makes it special.  Instead of the sweet, tomato-based sauces we are used to here in the Midwest, in the Carolinas they use a vinegar-based sauce that isn't sweet but is tangy and spicy.  It pairs perfectly with chicken and pork.  Today I made chicken.

The chicken came from Grossman's Meats, a farm in Preston, Iowa that markets pasture-raised poultry at the Freight House Farmer's Market here in Davenport.  I buy eggs from them regularly, and recently, with the wildly fluctuating food prices, I've started buying chicken from them as well.  Most of the other vendors have raised their prices, but Grossmans is still charging the same $1.75/lb they were asking for  back in the spring, before the drought.  This particular bird tipped the scales at about 4.8 pounds and cost around $8.50.  I placed it in the usual brine this morning: 2 quarts of water and 1 cup of kosher salt.  The water wasn't quite enough to cover the bird, so I added another quart.  I didn't bother adding any more salt though - 1 cup is plenty for up to a gallon of water.

At noon I pulled the chicken out of the brine, rinsed it, and threw it on the cutting board:

A five-pound chicken is pretty big.  This thing had hips like my ex-wife.  I decided to spatchcock it, so that it would smoke faster and it would be easier to pull the meat off of once the cooking was over.

Spatchcock Your Bird

It sounds dirtier than it is, and is actually pretty easy to do.  Spatchcocking is simply removing the backbone and breastbone of a bird so it can be folded out flat.  It's easy to accomplish with a small, sharp knife and a pair of kitchen shears.  To start, place the chicken breast-down on the cutting board with its tail towards you:

Take your kitchen shears and cut along one side of the backbone all the way from the rear opening to the front opening.  Then, do the same thing on the other side.  Don't be afraid to get rough with it if necessary. 

Once you have the backbone out, spread the two sides open so you have easy access to the inside.  Using your small knife (I used a 6" Calphalon utility knife) go ahead and remove any excess fat deposits, giblets, and any other nasty bits that don't look appetizing.  I had to remove a portion of the trachea from my bird, as well as large amounts of subcutaneous fat.  Once you are satisfied, give the bird a rinse.  

Now it is time to remove the breastbone.  Take your small but sharp knife and score along both sides of the breastbone.  Then, slip your fingers or thumb between the breastbone and the flesh of the breast and separate the breastbone from the meat as well as you can without using excessive force.

Here's a close-up:

You can see that part of the breastbone is cartilage, and further up the sternum it is solid bone.  You can lift up the cartilage easily and use the kitchen shears to cut the breast meat away from the bone.  Continue using the small knife and the shears to cut the solid portion of the breastbone out of the bird.  The only part that is difficult is the forward part, where you will need to cut through the shoulder area where the wishbone is.  Again, don't be afraid to apply some muscle as necessary.  

When you're done, here's what your bird should look like:

Flip it over, breast-side up, then press it down until it is folded flat.  You could quit now, but the last step is really easy, and after all of the trouble removing the breastbone and backbone, why not just go ahead and cut a couple of slits in the skin to tuck the drumsticks in?  It only takes another minute or so.  If you do, you'll have a nicely trimmed bird that looks like this:

Rub Your Bird

An optional step, but one that may give a little extra kick of flavor to your finished product.  I read about this on the Internet at BBQ Revolution.  It's called the dirty rag technique.  I'll talk more about it later, but for now just go ahead and use your favorite dry rub on the skin of the chicken.  You can do this on the bone side too - I do!  One of my favorite rub recipes is Mike Mills' Magic Dust rub.  Mike is a champion barbecue chef with 6 restaurants and countless competition trophies.  The recipe for the rub can be found all over the Internet.  Mike says it is his competition rub, but I'm not sure it is 100% accurate, because he's been quoted as saying that his rub has 13 ingredients, yet the published one only contains 9.  Here's a link to the recipe and a video of Mike from Good Morning America: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/recipe?id=10868429

Here's a photo of my chicken after sprinkling it generously with the Magic Dust:

Give Your Bird a (Non-lethal) Injection

Like most of what I write, this is optional.  Some people feel that brining their chicken is enough.  Others just take the chicken out of the refrigerator and throw it on the grill.  We all have to decide how much effort we are willing to put forth in pursuit of a moist, delicious chicken.  I chose to both brine and inject this bird. Pasture-raised chickens tend to be leaner than store-bought Tyson or Hormel chickens, and an injection of fat and fluids helps guard against dryness, especially in the white breast meat.  Besides, it's fun to play doctor!

Chicken Injection Recipe:

1/2 stick butter, melted

1 cup apple juice

Mix both ingredients vigorously using a fork or whisk.

Marinade injectors are not hard to find these days.  You should be able to pick one up at Menards, Lowes, or Walmart.  I purchased mine at Menards for about $4.50.  Place the injector in the butter and juice mixture and pull up on the plunger to suck the liquid into the plastic tube.  Then, insert the point of the injector into the chicken.  It will require some force to penetrate the skin, but be careful not to penetrate all the way through to the other side of the meat.  Inserting the needle at an angle may make it easier to accomplish this.  Once the needle is inserted, depress the plunger. You should be able to observe the skin and flesh of the chicken plumping up as the liquid enters the meat.  If you feel the meat, you should be able to feel it getting firmer as well due to the hydraulic pressure of the marinade.  Eventually, some of the marinade will squirt back out of the injection site. When this happens, remove the needle and select another injection site.  I try to space my injections about one inch apart over the entire top side of the bird.  

Smoke The Bird

You are going to want to smoke your chicken low and slow.  I usually smoke chicken at between 225 and 250 degrees fahrenheit for four hours.  Since this bird is spatchcocked, I can increase the heat.  So I'm aiming at a temperature between 250 and 275 degrees.  Don't be too concerned though...you can smoke a spatchcocked chicken at up to 350 degrees and still achieve good results.  In fact, higher temperatures may be better where you are looking for a crispy skin.  Since I'm making pulled meat, I don't really care about the skin and would rather cook lower and slower as insurance for a moist, tender breast.

My smoker is on the fritz, so I'm using my Huntington grill.  The grill is set up for indirect heating.  One grate has been removed.  Where the grate was, I placed a pan of water and a smoker box full of hickory chips.  I recommend apple chips for this, but I didn't have any today and decided to use hickory instead.  Hickory isn't bad for chicken, but apple or peach (if you can find it) are definitely better.

The Huntington is a four-burner grill.  I turned the rightmost burner on high, and the next one over on low.  The two on the left side are both turned off.  I had to fiddle with that second-burner-from-the-right throughout the cook to ensure a temperature no lower than 250 and no higher than 275.

To keep your bird from drying out, you'll need to spray it about once an hour with some apple juice.  I have a food-grade plastic spray bottle that I use for this purpose.  Don't try to get fancy and put herbs or spices in your spray bottle.  It won't work and you'll just clog the nozzle.  Straight apple juice is really all you need. 

Give Your Bird a Rest

Your chicken is done when it reaches a temperature of around 175F.  On a spatchcocked bird such as this, the coolest part may not be the breast.  In fact, when I took mine out of the smoke, the breast was 190F and the inner thighs were 175F.  However, even though it is done cooking, it's still not dinner time.  You need to let that bird rest for fifteen minutes.

Place the bird on a board, a platter, or a tray, then cover it with foil to retain any moisture that steams out.  I used one of those Reynolds aluminum foil roasting trays and covered it with more foil.  Whatever you use to cover and enclose it, leave it to sit for 15 minutes.  This will allow any juices to soak back into the meat and also let the proteins relax a bit.

Prepare Your Sauce

While the chicken is resting, you may as well go ahead and prepare your sauce.  Since this is a North Carolina-style sauce, it's supposed to be a spicy, vinegar-based sauce.  It should not taste like those tomato-based sweet sauces you find in the Deep South, nor like one of those spicy tomato-based sauces you find in the Southwest.  Here's the recipe I used:

1 Cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 Cup ketchup

2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp butter

2 tsp salt

2 tsp hot pepper sauce

Combine all ingredients and simmer until thickened to your preference, about 10-15 minutes.

Pull Your Meat

It's time to make use of the "dirty rag" technique.  First, cut the skin off of your chicken, making the pieces as large as possible.  I made three pieces of skin: one from the breast, and one from each leg/thigh.  I didn't bother skinning the wings.  I just saved those to eat whole later on.

Next, go ahead and pull the meat off of your chicken, tearing it into smallish pieces that will work well on a bun.  You may choose to separate the white meat from the dark meat as I did.  Either way, once you have the meat pulled from the bones, take the skin pieces (the "dirty rags") and rub them all over the pulled chicken, transferring spices and smoky flavor from the skin to the meat.  Once you're done rubbing them on your meat, you may dispose of the skins. 

Finally, spoon your sauce over the meat and stir to mix thoroughly.  If the meat is still hot, go ahead and serve it with warm hamburger buns.  Otherwise, you may need to reheat the chicken before serving.  I find that if you keep the sauce on a low burner while pulling the meat (and give it a quick stir now and then) you can mix the sauce with the pulled chicken and it will warm up the chicken to a nice temperature for serving.

Serving suggestions

The following sides are excellent with North Carolina-style Pulled Chicken:

Corn on the cob

Greens (either collard, mustard, turnip, or a mixture)

Cucumber and onion salad

Have fun and good eats!

It's Duck Season!

Pick Your Duck

When we were at the farmer's market last weekend, I passed a stand I didn't remember ever seeing before.  It was Dolan Farms Poultry.  They don't have much of a web presence, but their chalkboard sign indicated that they sell ducks, geese, and lamb.  We'd already purchased a chicken, a dozen eggs, and a bunch of produce and were running low on cash.  Unfortunately, most places at the farmer's market don't take cards, so we ended up purchasing the smallest duck they had on hand - about 3.25 pounds.

I was surprised they had a duck this small - I buy 5-pound chickens at the market regularly, and expected ducks to be at least that size.  Conor Dolan, the farm's owner, explained to me that they harvested their ducks earlier than usual this year and so they were running smaller.  Normally, he said, they would be in the 5-to-7 pound range.  He didn't say why they harvested them early, but I'm guessing it has to do with the extreme drought we've been experiencing.  This drought has been particularly tough for farmers who raise pastured animals.  These producers aren't used to paying for grain at all, but with the fields dried out there isn't much for the animals to graze on, and so they are  forced to purchase grain just to keep their livestock and poultry alive.  As well, they are having to pay record high prices for that grain due to low corn and soybean yields.

Prick Your Duck

Regardless of the reason for the small size, I was still quite happy to acquire this duck.  I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with it, but I was sure it was going to be good.  After kicking around various treatments, I decided to smoke it.  Furthermore, since my smoke is currently Out of Order, I decided to smoke it on my gas grill, and to use the rotisserie spit.  But before doing any of this, I decided to brine it.

I used my typical brine solution:

Typical Brine Solution

2 quarts water

1 cup coarse kosher salt

I placed the bird in a stainless-steel pot with the brine and then covered it with a plastic ziploc bag filled with water to hold it down underwater.  It stayed in the brine for five hours.  When it came out of the brine, I rinsed it and put it on the cutting board.  Here's what it looked like:

The first thing I noticed was that ducks have much longer sternums then chickens and consequently more breast meat.  The next thing I noticed is that, although ducks are known for being fatty, this duck was very lean.  There was some fat under the skin of the breast, but otherwise I couldn't see any visible fat deposits at all.  I pricked the skin of the breast repeatedly with the point of a sharp knife to allow the fat to drain out while it turned on the spit.  I was careful not to pierce the meat though!  I didn't want any of the juices in the meat to drain out, because that would make the meat dry and tough.

Blow Your Duck

Next, I dragged the fan out of the bedroom and plugged it into the kitchen to blow across the duck.  This would help to dry out the surface and form a nice pellicle for the smoke to adhere to.  I kept the fan blowing on it for about an hour, and I flipped it and rotated it a couple of times to make sure the back and both ends were dry as well.  You could skip this step if you needed to and just pat it with some paper towels, but forming a pellicle creates a significantly browner skin and a thicker smoke ring.

Tie Up and Spit Your Duck

As I said above, you don't want to pierce the meat and allow the juices to flow out.  That would defeat the whole purpose of the brine.  Fortunately, my rotisserie spit came with four-tined forks that fit just perfectly around this duck, creating a sort of cage that held it in place and supported it without any of the tines actually piercing the flesh.  It's a little hard to tell from the photos, but none of the tines are actually going into the meat.  One is going between the thigh and pelvic area in the photo below.  Another is going over the breast skin, but appears to be going into the breast meat because of the camera angle:

Here's another photo showing the back side:

Slather Your Duck With a Sweet, Sticky Sauce

I used maple syrup. Fake, flavored corn syrup is *not* maple syrup and will not give your duck a good flavor.  This bird gave it's life for your gastronomic enjoyment, so please treat it with the respect it deserves and use a quality maple syrup.  Alternatives include light molasses, fruit juices, or jam/jelly/marmalade.  Cherry and orange are favorites, but you should seriously consider raspberry or peach.  Be creative, but remember that bright, sweet flavors work the best for duck, and sticky is good for getting the smoke to adhere.  

Speaking of smoke, I should point out that duck is not chicken.  It doesn't taste the same, it doesn't have the same texture, and it takes much longer to cook.  Don't make the mistake of thinking you can use you favorite chicken recipe and substitute duck for chicken.  You just can't.  It won't work and you'll end up having pizza for dinner.  On the other hand, duck can be much, much more delicious than chicken when cooked properly.  In particular, it's stronger flavor stands up well to lots of smoke, and the tougher texture of duck lends itself well to low-and-slow cooking.  That makes smoked duck a natural, and doing things like forming a pellicle, using a sticky basting sauce, and selecting woods with stronger flavors (I used hickory) are perfectly reasonable actions when cooking duck, even though I wouldn't recommend these things for chicken.  In fact, these days I hardly smoke chicken at all.  When I do, I just brine it and through it on the smoker, but I'm much more likely to grill it than to smoke it.

Smoke Your Duck

I mentioned earlier that my Kenmore vertical smoker is down, right?  It has a bad regulator, and in typical Sears/Kenmore fashion, they used custom threads on the valve hose so you cannot use an off-the-shelf replacement regulator from Lowes or Menards.  I guess they figure they can sell more smokers that way.  In any case, I have plans for that smoker that will be detailed on this blog in future articles.  For now, I'm getting by using the new Huntington gas grill that I received for my birthday last April.  It has four regular burners plus a rotisserie burner.  In the photo below you can see my setup for the duck:

I removed the grates so I could put the wood chips closer to the flames.  I've only got one wood chip box (the one from the Kenmore, on the right side of the grill) and this is a fairly large unit that is much less air-tight than an actual smoker so I supplemented the wood chip box with a heavy steel colander full of hickory chips (on the back left side of the grill).  In the middle, under the bird, I placed a drip pan.  Even though the duck is spitted on a rotisserie, I'm not using the rotisserie burner because I'm smoking the bird and need to use the regular burners to keep the wood chips smoking.  Hopefully this makes sense to you...if not, just post a question in the comments and I'll try to give a better explanation.  Also, here's a couple more photos that might help explain what I'm trying to accomplish:

The drip pan catches fat dripping off the duck so it doesn't cause flare-ups.  Also, I'm used to using a water smoker (my old Kenmore is a water smoker), so I put water in the drip tray, thus it is pulling double duty by adding humidity under the grill hood while also catching the dripping fat.

See how much smoke is pouring out of the unit (above)?  That's both good and bad.  Good, because the duck is being exposed to a lot of smoke.  Bad, because I have to keep opening the hood to replenish the wood chips as they burn down.  Every time I open the hood, the temperature drops and the smoke exits.  I don't get too frustrated by this though...it is what it is, and life is full of trade-offs.  Smoking meat takes patience, and patience is virtuous.

Eat Your Duck

Here's what the duck looked like near the end of the smoke.  I think I went another 20 minutes or so after this photo because the inner thigh meat wasn't quite 165 degrees yet (which was the internal temperature I was shooting for).  This is because, when you truss a birds legs, you're creating a sort of "pocket" between the pelvic area and the inner thigh, so the inner thigh is somewhat protected from the heat.  Since the thigh meat of a duck is some of the most wonderful, flavorful meat on the bird, you don't want that to be undercooked.  Besides, if you are cooking low and slow and you brined your duck properly, another twenty minutes isn't going to hurt anything.  It's actually pretty hard to overcook a duck when your grill/smoker is only running 200-225 degrees!

Finally, here is the finished product.  I smoked it at about 215-225 degrees for 4 1/2 hours.  Remember though that this is a pretty small duck.  If you have a larger one (which you almost certainly will, especially with a domestic bird) you will want to smoke it longer at that temperature.  If you're in a hurry though, feel free to crank the heat up as high as 300, just make sure you brine it good first and baste it while cooking.  

Once you pull it off the smoker, let it rest for 15 minutes before carving.  Otherwise you will lose all of the juices as soon as you cut into it and it will taste very dry.  

Bon Appetit!

What else can you do with a pork belly?

Rotisserie Pork Belly

Besides bacon, is a pork belly good for anything?  That almost seems like heresy - bacon is so good, why would you *want* to do anything else with a pork belly?  The answer, I suppose, is...creativity?  Novelty?  Dare I say...boredom?  Whatever.  Last week rotisserie grilled pork belly was on the menu, and I didn't hear any complaints from Jean :)

I had a nine-pound pork belly without skin that I was preparing to put in cure, so I sliced off about 2 1/2 pounds of it for dinner.  The idea was to roll it up like a roast and then grill it on a spit.  My new Huntington grill has a rotisserie burner and we've been roasting one chicken per week, so it seemed like a good idea to branch out and put something else on the skewer besides poultry.

Brine the Belly

I only brined the pork belly portion for an hour, since this was a last-minute flash of inspiration.  The rule in our house is that dinner absolutely has to be on the table before 8pm, and I estimated that it would take at least two hours to cook this pig.  Although simple, I'll give you the brine recipe just in case this is your first time:

Saltwater Brine
2 Quarts Water
1 Cup Kosher Salt

Combine all ingredients and stir until salt is thoroughly dissolved.  Put meat in brine.  To ensure meat is completely submerged, put a ziplock bag full of water on top, or else push a plate down on top of the meat until it is submerged. Or you can do as I did and just place the brine and the meat in a really big ziploc bag.  Whatever you want to do is OK, as long as the meat is completely surrounded by the brine.

Ideally, you will brine your meat for at least four hours but no more than 12.  These are just guidelines though, and every piece of meat (as well as every cook) is different.

Form the Pellicle

Once the brine is done, take the meat out and rinse it thoroughly, then pat it dry.  At this point, you may choose to leave the meat to sit out and form a pellicle (a dry, slightly sticky exterior).  The pellicle will help smoke particles to adhere to the meat.  You might even set up a fan to blow air across the surface of the meat, which will help the pellicle to form faster.  In my case however, I was looking to get things moving along as quickly as possible so I skipped this step.

Season and Roll the Belly

For the seasoning rub, I placed a combination of herbs and spices in a small food processor to chop and combine.  Here are the seasonings I used:

Herbal Seasoning for Pork Belly
3 large cloves of garlic
1 tsp ground sage
1 tsp fennel seeds
5 bay leaves
2 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp kosher salt
10 small sprigs of fresh thyme
1 fresh shallot, chopped

Before

After

Place all ingredients in a small food processor and pulse until minced and combined.







Now you are ready to tie up your meat.  Place it on the cutting board, fat side down, with some butcher's string beneath it. I used three pieces of string for mine:

Next, spread your seasoning on the top of the belly using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon.

Then roll up the belly and tie the pieces of string.  Here's a view of  mine from the top:

And from the end: 

The outside of the rolled pork belly is pretty fatty, so this step may be superflous, but I brushed mine with olive oil anyway.  I brush almost everything with olive oil, it's just how I roll.  It certainly can't hurt.  I also like to throw salt on things that aren't slugs, but I skipped the salt on this project because it's already been brined in salt water and too much salt can make things taste bad.

Grill the Pork Belly

You can't eat raw pork belly - it isn't good for you.  So I set up the grill for rotisserie cooking.  For me, this means placing a tray under the meat to catch the juices and turning on the rear rotisserie burner.  The rotisserie burner is a nice option on the grill because it allows you to cook meat on the turning spit without worrying about flare-ups from the grease dripping onto the flames below.  Instead, the flames are at the back of the grill.  This is the first grill I've ever owned that has this feature, and I've used it every week since I got it.  It makes amazing chicken!  Anyway, here is a picture of the grill set up for rotisserie cooking:

I heated the grill to 500 degrees before putting the belly on so that it would get a nice sear.  Here's a shot of the pork belly.  You can see the special rotisserie burner running across the back of the grill:

Here's the belly partway through the cooking time.  Notice all of the drippings in the pan, and the nice crispy exterior forming on the belly.  This is going to be good :P

Eat the Pork Belly

I can't grill corn when using the rotisserie burner, so this corn was boiled.  Iowa sweet corn is the perfect complement to grilled pork belly, I think.  My parents sourced this corn from one of their church friends.  It's called Mister Mini and has really small ears with small, tightly-packed kernels that are very sweet.  Cooking it is almost unncessary, that's how tender and sweet it is!

Some glamour shots of the finished product: 

Bailey and Hershey were literally vibrating while I cut into this succulent roast and plated it.  Unfortunately, there were no leftovers for them.  Poor puppies!