Hey, what's up barbecue lovers?
How do you cook a perfectly moist, pellet grill chicken
that everybody will love?
In this video, I'll show you how to spatchcock and cook
a perfectly juicy bird without a lot of hassle.
The biggest challenge on whole chicken and half chicken,
just to get the breast and the thigh just right
at the same time.
The secret is in the temperature and placement on the grill.
Stay with me through these seven steps,
or you can cook an amazing chicken that will wow
your friends and your family.
All right, for the first thing I'm going to do
is I'm going to cut out the backbone.
Some cooks like to just cut it right down the middle.
That's okay, you can do that too.
I personally like to cut out the backbone.
So I'm going to cut this one out.
I'm just gonna use these little scissors here.
These are poultry shears, and cut right down the back here.
Okay, next what we want to do we want to open up
that chicken a little bit.
Now it has a keel bone, what we call the breastbone
right here in the middle.
I like to take a knife and just very gently
tap it a little bit, right there.
(knife clangs)
- Just enough to get it to crack open.
I don't want to go too deep and cut into the membrane.
That membrane that protects the breast is going
to keep all the moisture inside.
So we just want to do just enough to get it to lay down
a little more flat like that.
Trim off any little excess stuff that looks like
it might affect how the bird lays.
(rock music) (bell dings)
- We're going to take a little bit of OG,
this is salt, pepper, garlic, the original season all.
And I'm going to go ahead and get generous with this one
down here in the bottom.
I am going to put a little bit of WOW!
underneath as well on here.
Get some up under the wings here.
Wings are one of my favorite part of the chicken.
And then just give it a nice even coat on top.
All right, now we're going to take a little bit of WOW!.
We're gonna season that over here on the top too,
right over the OG.
All right, let's go outside and get fired up.
All I got to do is hit the button.
Bam.
Now part of the secret is to get it to cook nice and even
you want to put the thighs towards the heat.
In this case in the recteq,
it has all these holes around the outside.
The heat is coming up around through those holes
and around the edges.
So we want to put the breast right in the middle,
(bell dings) - And get the
thighs around the outside.
Just like that.
Right around there, pretty good.
There we go.
I'm gonna put it right there for now.
We'll be back in about 15, 20 minutes.
Right now we're running at about 250 degrees.
All right barbecue lovers, here we go.
It's been right at 28 minutes. (bell dings)
- We're going to go ahead and flip that chicken.
Put a little bit of crispy skin on here.
Cook the other side,
(meat sizzles) - There we go.
Easy peasy, just like that.
Now the other thing I'm going to do right now,
now I'm gonna crank the heat up to 275.
I was running 250.
I'm going to go up just a little bit hotter,
cause I want to get that skin nice and tight,
and a little bit crispy.
We'll be back in another 15 or 20 minutes.
All right, actually, it's only been about 10, 11 minutes,
(bell dings) - but I can smell that chicken
and I can see little whiffs of smoke,
kind of popping up there.
I want to see what that thing looks like.
What we don't want to do is burn the skin.
We just wanted to crisp it up a little bit.
(meat sizzles) (man whistles)
- Look at that.
It looks okay.
I'm going to turn it back one more time.
We'll leave it another 10 minutes.
(meat sizzles) - Whew, that's hot.
We're looking at 51 minutes, and it's time
to flip it back (bell dings)
- the other way and let it finish cooking.
I'm gonna go grab my Thermapen in just a minute,
and see what it looks like inside.
(meat sizzling)
- Look at that juice, whew.
All right.
Now what I do want to do is, I want it to get,
I want to keep the breast away from the direct heat.
The direct heat is more on this side,
you can tell just by the color of the drumsticks,
and the way the wing tips turn,
when they were facing toward the wall.
Gonna close it up, gonna go grab my thermapen.
Look at that real pretty color.
That's developed by being the other way.
Let's see what temperature is inside, I'll be right back.
We're going to check the thigh first.
See what that looks like, I'll bet it's done.
175.
(meat sizzling)
- That one, 172.
I like to bounce it off the bone if I can find it.
160.
I see a little bit of red juice coming out of there.
That's not done yet.
Let me check the other one a little bit deeper too.
Yeah, you can see that little bit of red juice,
it's definitely not done.
It may be hot up here at the top where the bone is
because it was flipped over the other way.
But when you go deeper down into that thigh,
just cracking 159 degrees,
and I'm not even gonna worry about the breast yet,
because the thighs ain't done anyway.
We're going to try to loose any excess juice
from the breasts until the thighs are reading
the temperature they need to,
and the juices are running clear.
I also picked up the temperature to 300 degrees
while it was flipped over.
So it's still running at three.
This thing should be ready in about 10 or 15 minutes tops.
And once you start getting really close to the finish line,
you need to check a little bit more often.
All right, this time we're going to check the thigh again.
And we're also going to check the breast.
Look at that pretty color, yeah buddy.
Man oh man.
Looks like we're way done.
We're 177 on here.
177 on the other side, perfect.
All right, let's probe our breast right down here
with deep in the middle.
(meat sizzling)
- Picking up 148.
So we're definitely behind on our breast.
Remember what I said, it wasn't over the direct heat.
It was definitely way behind.
Our thighs are going to be a little over cooked,
but you know, you can take a thigh up to 190 degrees,
200 even, and it's going to be okay.
You don't want to over cook the breast.
What we're going to do, we're going to take this breast
rotate it the other way around,
put it right over the fire there.
Again, remember I explained it that heat comes out
around the little deflection plate,
through the holes, so we're going to pull the thighs
a little further back and try to get that breast
to catch up at least to get done to 160 degree.
Close it back up.
We'll be back in another 15, 20 minutes,
and we'll let you guys know what the total time is.
All right, friends.
It's time to check one more time.
It has been, according to the stopwatch,
one hour and 25 minutes.
All right.
We know that the thighs are done, no need to check thigh.
We just want to find out if that breast is done.
(man whistles)
- 161.
I'd say we're money, we are good.
Let's check the other one just for good measure.
That one's in the 170s, so we are way, way done.
Let's go ahead and get this thing pulled off.
All right, that is one beautiful, delicious,
juicy looking bird.
I see juice coming out already.
Look at that.
All right, let's get it inside and get it cut up.
All right my barbecue lover friends,
we went outside and (bell dings)
- put our spatchcock chicken on the recteq
bullseye pellet grill.
I was running some mesquite and hickory pellets in there.
A little combination of both.
And as you can see the pellet grill
put a really beautiful color on there.
Along with the seasonings, the WOW! and the OG.
All together it made for a really nice looking chicken.
If you've got any questions about how juicy and moist
this thing is, just look at all that juice floating
around in this plate.
All right, now, the first thing we're going to do
is we're going to split the bird in half,
right down the middle here.
Oh my gosh, look at the juice.
Folks, this was not an injected or a brined chicken,
neither, okay?
And just look at that amazing moisture this chicken has,
just beautiful.
It's right there.
You can really see that.
Can see that right there.
All right, after you have the chicken split in half,
let's go ahead and move one side, one half of it over here.
I'm going to come right between the thigh and the breast
and separate the thigh here.
Look how easy that comes apart.
Just really, really, quick and easy.
We're going to separate the drumstick from the thigh.
There's one drumstick.
Now, the thigh bone runs up and down like this,
so I'm gonna come right along the side of the thigh bone
here and just give it a nice little split here.
So there's three pieces just from the thigh alone.
One, two, and three.
All right, now, one of the things I like to do
with the breast, a lot of times we carve it
along length wise.
We're going to separate the wing here,
set that aside over here.
But another way, I call these breasts medallions.
I like to cut it across the breast like this.
(cutting chicken)
- We're going to get way more than eight pieces out of here.
Like this.
(cutting chicken)
- All right, one more, and here this last piece here,
this is breast, and we have the drumette here attached
to the breast, kind of similar to what you get at a lot
of your fried chicken places.
All right, we're going to set that aside over here
for a little bit.
Let's do the same thing to the other half.
(cutting chicken)
- Now, in this case, I left the wing tip on here,
or I left the wing on here attached to the drumette
and attached to the breast.
Just another way that you can do,
I'm just giving you guys ideas.
If you're throwing big parties and you have
a lot of people over,
this is one way you can make your chicken go a long ways.
And that my friends is a great way to split up
a whole chicken.
After you cook it spatchcock, it's super juicy, super moist,
I can tell.
And my mouth is literally salivating to take a bite.
So I can't stand it any longer.
I'm gonna go ahead and grab a piece from back here,
and just get a little piece, see what it tastes like.
Oh my gosh, it looks so good.
- [Woman] That's a big piece.
- Mm.
Oh, baby.
Mm.
Very moist.
Very, very moist.
That parquet.
It has a little bit of buttery taste in there,
actually it's very subtle.
That WOW! inside that slather,
mixed with the poultry seasoning,
it looked like a lot, but it really wasn't.
It's very subtle.
It's just barely even in there, but man,
that's really, really good.
Mm.
All right if any of you are interested in really upping
your barbecue game, check out my online barbecue classes
at pitmasterclass.us.
I have one particular video dedicated
strictly to different ways of cooking chicken,
just like this.
If you just want to learn how to cook better chicken,
or you can learn all of the other popular
barbecue meats at pitmasterclass.us.
Now you can buy my seasonings at pitmaster.us.
I have OG, which is salt, pepper, garlic,
and then we have the, WOW!
to boom, wow your taste buds.
If you guys have any questions or comments
in our process today, just go ahead and ask in the comments.
Guys and girls, thanks so much for watching.
We really appreciate each and every one of you guys.
I hope you got some value out of this.
And once again, if you did, hit the like button,
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next time our video comes out.
Remember to keep the folk life
and make it work.
Boom.
(rock music)