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.
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!
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