7 Steps to Perfectly Smoked BBQ Chicken Breasts

We had some chicken thawing yesterday and decided it was time to fire up the Saffire. Here are the steps I took for some tasty BBQ chicken sandwiches.

1. Season the chicken

Seasoning is key. Choose the flavors you like and don't be afraid to experiment. I've cooked Latin flavored chicken, and lemon pepper chicken, garlic pepper chicken, chicken seasoned with onion and rosemary or thyme. What I haven't done is cook chicken breasts for bBQ pulled chicken sandwiches. I really didn't know if the seasoning I would use for pork would work. But I love my home made BBQ rub, so I thought, "Why not?"

My homemade rub is just a blend of chili powder, onion and garlic powders, kosher salt, cracked black pepper, garlic salt, white sugar and brown sugar. I added a little cayenne for kick. I'm thinking of using paprika again and less chili powder next time. Sugar is the base followed by chili powder. Everything else is added to taste tsp to tbs range. I don't measure. I just experiment.

2. Choose your Fuel

Ceramic grillers only use lump charcoal for grilling, smoking, or baking. That's because charcoal briquettes contain chemicals that leech into the ceramic. They also don't taste as good. We don't use lighter fluid to light our charcoal for the same reason we don't use briquettes. Too many chemicals just ruin things.

I lit the charcoal left over from my country ribs a few days ago (read about them here). It was Mesquite Saffire lump charcoal. Mesquite charcoal can have a noticeable smell and flavor. What I wanted next was to provide a subtle counterpoint, similar to sweet and sour or sweet and spicy concepts.

3. Choose your Smoke

I decided that I would go with Apple wood chips. I only just recently bought my first bag of apple chips and I'm definitely hooked.

Once the fire was good and hot, I put the chicken on and added three handfuls of chips using my handy dandy chip feeder.

I would add two more handfuls after a half hour, without opening the dome once!

Need a Smokin' Chip Feeder for your Saffire? Click here.

The smoke was just awesome.

4. Set your Temperature

The key to quality BBQ is low and slow. You can see my thermometer is in the Gray "Smoking" temperature range. I closed the bottom vent, leaving it open barely a half inch. You can see that I closed my daisy wheel almost completely.

Restricting air flow coupled with the incredible heat retention of the Saffire makes for some excellent BBQ!

*Sidenote - I have a cinder block half buried in a hole my dog Buckley (you can see him in the very first picture spying on me) dug under the fence. He's less of an escape artist now, but I have a chihuahua mix that could fit through the hole so the cinder block stays.

The potatoes went on about an hour into the cook. I sliced 6 medium potatoes in half, and rubbed the skins with butter, sprinkling them with kosher salt and garlic powder. I'd probably mix chili powder, kosher salt and garlic powder into the butter next time before applying it. My gut tells me it will taste better.

The smallest piece and a few potatoes came off at the 2 hour mark. The rest smoked for 20 more minutes.

5. Wrap the BBQ

When the chicken is done, whether you're using a thermometer or the cut test, take it off immediately and wrap it in foil. In my case, I wrapped the smallest piece for 20 minutes, and the others for about 10 while the last few potatoes were finishing.

Just look at them! The chicken had a nice bark with a pretty pink hue. And the potatoes were perfect!

6. Start pulling

I pulled the chicken to make pulled chicken BBQ sandwiches in a large plastic bowl one breast at a time. The meat doesn't take much work to pull at all, and the bowl lets me mix some of the rub through all of the chicken.

Only 3 chicken breasts made all this! There's enough there for a whole other meal!

7. Decide how to serve it

BBQ chicken can be used in salads or sandwiches. In the end, we made some amazing sandwiches, utilizing split segments of Italian bread for the buns and topped the meat with Honey BBQ sauce. The sweet and spicy sauce only enhanced the sweet apple smoke and the more pungent mesquite flavor. The potatoes turned out nicely too. Next time, I'm going to try and twice back them. Can't wait!