Anybody out there
could put chicken drumsticks
in the oven.
But smoked chicken drumsticks?
Yes.
today we are making
smoked chicken drumsticks
but not just any chicken drumsticks
we're making these
on my pit boss austin xl
and we're not just gonna
lay these chicken legs
on the grates
no
we can't do that
we don't want grill marks today
we're gonna hang them
on a little hanging rack
that way they just get saturated
with as much hickory smoke
as we possibly can
and we're not just gonna season them
and let them smoke in a dry rub
we're gonna do that
but at the end
we're gonna dunk them in some sauce
i'm ready
are you ready
let's smoke 'em
so the first thing that we need to do today is get some paper towel
and pat off our chicken legs
so guys we're just going to come in here
and we're just going to kind of grab our legs
just get them nice and dry this is going to help our skin
to get a little bit crispier when we cook them, and for today's cook, getting that
nice and crispy skin is gonna be really important because
i wanna smoke these at a lower temperature so the more moisture that we can get out
of these bad boys, the better. it's gonna be some super awesome, tender, juicy, delicious little chicken legs
so today i'm just gonna be taking this salt pepper garlic and i just want to get a nice little base layer
a nice little coat on there i'm gonna go ahead and i'm just gonna kind of pick these up
when i go to season them
this is gonna add
a nice little base layer of flavor
so we're just gonna be
picking these bad boys up
we're just kind of shaking them all around
making sure we get the top and the sides
and get those little handles
this is the fun part of cooking
when you just get to
smother it in a bunch of seasonings
and this guy right here is really really big
so we're going to coat him up real nice
so this is that sweet preacher i was talking about
it's going to add in a nice little bit of color
but i don't want to overdo it
i just want to be able to see
a little bit of the chicken
that looks really good to me
let's go ahead and
pop this little bad boy right here
get the top
and that looks pretty perfect to me
and the reasoning why
i really don't want to
pop a whole bunch of the seasoning on there
is because this isn't a brisket
this isn't a pork butt
these aren't ribs
this is just chicken
i love the flavor of juicy chicken
when it gets some nice smoke on it
i don't want to be covered up in a bunch of seasoning
the seasoning is just going to
help us to get a nice little pop of flavor on here
help get that skin crispied up
oh yeah, this is starting to look like a dream to me
this fat's gonna render
it's gonna get nice and tender and juicy
filled with the smoke
that's how we like it
that's good for our seasoning today
so this is what it's gonna look like
when it is all said and done
it's gonna be nice and seasoned up
but we're still able to see our chicken through there
i'd say this is about a nice medium coat of seasoning
so now that we have these all seasoned up
our next step is to go outside and fire up our smoker
whatever you're gonna be cooking on today
go ahead and get that ready
and then we're just gonna let these
sit out on the board until that's done
it's probably gonna take about 15 minutes
it's gonna start to soak into the meat
it's gonna get nice and glistened
and then i have a little secret for you guys
i bought a new device
that we're gonna be trying out
so i'm gonna load these up here in a few minutes
after we go outside and get our smoker fired up
all right guys
so we are out here at the pit boss austin xl today
we're gonna be using some hickory pellets that i already have loaded up in my hopper
and i'm going to set this at 250 degrees
so now that we have this all fired up
we're going to let it preheat
what i like to do is
i like to leave the lid open
while all that first initial dirty smoke
starts to come out
then once it's good and preheated
i like to shut it down
and let it come up to the right temperature
and then i'll get the chicken on there
okay so now we are back inside
and i just want to show you
the little thing i picked up yesterday
to make these legs
all right guys so check out this contraption that i just got this is an awesome little unit here this right here is for our beer can chickens and then these right here are for our legs we're gonna hang them uh right in here there's enough for 12 of these and then if you were to flip this whole entire unit over right in here is a little rib rack you could fit six slabs of ribs in here so this thing is awesome i absolutely love it and it was only like 16 bucks all right guys so we're gonna go ahead and hang these on our rack i'm gonna be placing three on one side and i'm gonna be placing three on the other side the reason why i'm doing this is so that the weight is evenly distributed and so that they don't touch each other because these are really huge drumsticks all right guys we're gonna go ahead and open up our pit boss and we're gonna set it right here in the middle now that our chicken is soaking up some of this nice blue clean smoke we're gonna let this hang out here for about a good hour or so okay you guys so we are back inside we got our chicken out on our smoker and now would be a perfect time to make our glaze we're not gonna need it for about a good hour and a half or so but i mean i want to just get it prepared now and ready that way all i gotta do is take it and zap it in the microwave before we go out there to dunk them and yes we are gonna be dunking them today we're not just gonna be you know glazing them and painting them like i normally would with chicken we're just going to take them right off slap them dunk them slip them back on throw them around whatever you do with your chicken that's what we're going to be doing today so what we're going to do is we're going to squirt out a whole bunch of sweet baby rays in our cup then we're gonna be taking our apple cider vinegar and we're just gonna be dumping in a nice little bit and now we're just gonna mix up the sauce until it's nice and well incorporated and then it'll be ready so we are now at the one hour mark i'm gonna go ahead and get a quick temperature read and we'll see where they're at so he's been smoking at 250 degrees really really nice and as you guys can see we're starting to get really nice color on these bad boys looks like this is starting to crisp up real nice so what we're gonna do is we're just gonna carefully kind of go in here and try to get a little temperature i would say that we need to go ahead and sauce these up probably in about a good 20 minutes or so when they get around 165 degrees we're gonna go ahead and sauce them up so go ahead and shut them down alright guys so it's been about another 30 35 minutes i just checked the temperature they are definitely ready to be glazed so let's go ahead and dunk them so don't forget before you bring this out here make sure that you microwave it for a little bit uh get it nice and lukewarm or warm all right so we're just going to open this up and this is going to be
a little bit tricky i'm going to have to have this open for a second i'm going to kind of move
this over here all right so i'm just going to go ahead and grab this little guy right off of
the back here and we're just going to take him oh boy look at this i did not think about this okay
oh yeah look at that so i'll go ahead and set him right back up on here all right so we're
just going to go ahead and take some of these off and we're going to drop them in here kind
of spin them around we're going to try to get her get her top of that knuckle all sauced up
just going to let it shake off and we're just gonna set it back on there now again we're gonna
take that bad boy off we're just gonna set him in there let's try to get some of that top this
is real messy i didn't think about this but hey we're just doing what we could do but check that
out look at that now we're gonna let that sit on here and caramelize a little bit
all right so we're taking this bad boy and i gotta kind of speed this up so i'm just gonna kind
of shake this off get it back on there get that little guy nice and dunked and sauced up in there
oh yeah this is turning out super great actually i'm not gonna be wasting that much sauce
so that's pretty cool so let's go ahead and shut this down and we're gonna let this go for about
another 15 minutes or so all right guys it's been about good 15-20 minutes in the smoke so let's
open this bad boy up and see what our finished product looks like and here we go wow
look at the color on these this color on here is caramelized just so beautifully and so perfectly i
i just need to take these inside and take a bite are you guys we are back inside now and i just
have a little tidbit of information for you guys so i got those done i brought them inside my kid
woke up from his nap my mom came over for a visit and time just got away from me so i wanted to make
a new batch so that i could actually try them fresh and i had to kind of rush this one so i
smoked it at a bit higher of a temperature i did it around 350 450 i honestly just messed with it
the whole time i was like no needs to go faster so i turned it up and then thought it was too
hot so i turned it back down so the batch that you were about to see that i'm just gonna film
as the finished product today so i just figured i'd be transparent and honest with you guys that
way you didn't see the finished product and be like well those look more charred than
the original ones do and that's why because i did them at a little bit of a higher temp but
i'm hoping they still got a little bit of smoke in them they're gonna have a lot more crispy of
a skin a lot more of that nice charred chicken flavor i did them exactly the same so you could do
them either way that you want so without further ado let's see how they came out so here we go
wow
okay let me give you guys a rundown on this chicken all right it doesn't have as much smoke
flavor as it would had it had been done super low and slow but the char i think really makes up for
it because this has all those little black bits on there that char from that heat just really
crisping up that skin and putting that sauce on there caramelizing down that high heat really
makes up for it and there is a little bit of smoke like you could tell it wasn't done in an oven
clearly it was clearly done on a grill a little bit of smoke it's not like a brisket i know i see
people in the comments sometimes saying like how do you get good smoke and chicken and really the
only way to do it is to do it super low and slow the way that i had first done it and that's not
even really slow and slow enough i was doing that at 250. you really need to do it at like 200 or
225 for a long period of time to really get deep smoke and chicken but then you know there's other
complications that come with that but this chicken right here do the sauce it's so caramelized on
there because of that high heat but uh yeah all in all this is great chicken i am super super happy
with the way that it turned out i hope you guys give this a try let just give you a little bit
of tidbit of information if you want to make them hot and fast i think i did it at about 450 degrees
for like 30 to 40 minutes then i turned it down to like 350 and i let it ride out the rest of the way
total time i think was around an hour a little bit over an hour i glazed it for the last like
10 minutes or so and it turned out like super charred super nice the low and slow one i think
took about a total of two hours at 250 degrees but please especially when you're making chicken
please don't just copy my times exactly or if your smoker has a hot part or a or a cold part
and you try to just mimic this recipe based off of time you could end up with raw chicken or overdone
chicken and i wouldn't want you guys getting all angry with me because your chicken didn't
turn out good so please use a thermometer i have links down below in the description you can go
ahead and check out my thermometer there i used a thermapen mk4 so just go there and check it out
buy one use it they're extremely accurate and it'll help you get that perfect chicken i ended up
taking these off from 175 180 degrees that's where i like my wings my thighs and my drums so i just
wanted to tell you guys that somebody you could uh mimic this recipe and i hope it turns out great
for you guys so with all that being said we've come to the end of another amazing video hope
you guys subscribe to the channel like this video share it with your friends or don't share with
your friends just make the food and share with them i love that i get to cook and share these
videos with you guys i hope you enjoy them and i also hope you have a great day night whatever
time it is when you find this video and i'll see you guys in the next video look at this guy peace