How to BBQ Chicken | Kenji’s Cooking Show

hey everyone its Kenji and we’re gonnabarbecue some chicken so I’m talkingbarbecue today I’m talking about it insort of the sense the sense of theAmerican South you know slow and slowwith smoke so the first thing we’regonna do with our kettle grill set up wedo this over a gas grill as well but Iprefer using a kettle grill withcharcoal for what I’m doing to smoke andI’ll explain why in a second but we gota charcoal briquettes but for barbecueyou know for low and slow things I findbriquettes to be better than lumpcharcoal because briquettes are come aredense and they’re reliable today theyhave a sort of slow even heat whereaslump charcoal tends to be a little moreand even it can burn hotter but it’sharder to predict exactly how fast isgonna burn and it tends to burn up a lotfaster so I got a chimney starter herelet’s tear off a bit of the bag crumpleit up and get it under here chimneystarted by the way the best way to get agrill going you don’t need to botherwith lighter fluiddon’t need to definitely don’t get thematch light stuff because that stuffalways ends up smelling like lighterfluid when you’re done so basically allyou got to do is get a piece of paperunder here get it going just like thatand then that fire is gonna basicallytake care of itselfall that coals gonna light up on its ownit’ll take about 15 minutes and it’ll beready to go I’m in the meantime I’mgoing to geared andI’m gonna rub my chicken um so chickenlegsit’s what I’m going with so thighs anddrumsticks I’m actually savate thesepieces individually already portionedthousand turban sticks tend to workbetter than breasts breasts tend to dryout when you’re when you do this kind oflow slow thing although you know if youwant to you can sort of brine breastsand and check them and do all these kindof things that will help them stay morejuicy but thighs and drumsticks they dosee on their own so you don’t need toreally worry about that so I’ve got adry rub going on here this rub is therecipes on serious heats it’s about 1/3cup of paprika 1/3 cup of brown sugar Ibelieve a 1/4 cup of chili powder thenthere’s also a little bit of cumin somecoriander seed some black pepper garlicpowder onion powder I’ll put the exactrecipe up on the screen here I’ll kindof I’ll show it to you as I browse onserious eats in them but you can alwaysfollow the link in the description andget the exact recipe also you don’t haveto use a BBQ ler barbecue rub you canjust kind of use your your favoriterecipe or use a store-bought blend itdoesn’t really matter too much barbecueis really more technique than it is aspecific flavors I’m gonna be prettygenerous with this rub here really nicelike coat all the pieces this is one ofthose times on a quarter sheet pan orhalf sheet pan like this comes in reallyuseful actually this is a quarter sheetso really get it all over it’s calledthe rubs and I call this sprinkle so youreally want to rub it in there and sothe reason we use the reason I prefercharcoal over gas is because gas by itsvery nature has to it requires lots oflittle be cars more oxygen than thecharcoal to to combust and you can’treally control the the vents on a gasgrill the idea I mean the reason youcan’t control the vents on the gasgrills because the guests yourmanufacturers don’t want the flame taxdon’t they go out because of lack ofoxygen and then you end up building upgas inside there and then when you tryand ignite it it all explodes so gasgrills are designed to always have aconstant flow of oxygen going throughand if there’s a way for oxygen to getin it means that there’s a way for smoketo get out so even if you put wood youknow you get one of those little smokingboxes which I have for your gas grilleven when you get one of those and stickit on there you’re never gonna capturethe smoke in there in the same way thatyou can on a charcoal grill a charcoalgrill you have basically as much controlas you want you can close off the bottomvents and close off the top vents andreally trap that smoke in of course itmakes the flame go lower but that’s finefor when we’re doing barbecue wares on agas grill you can not all right so nowI’m going to wait for this charcoalchimney to go and so I guess I will beback I’m gonna wash my hands in this jarin the meantime I’ll be back in about 15minutes so now what we’re gonna do soyou can see all the charcoal is lit whatI’m gonna do is I’m going to spread themover one side just like that it’s likethat into a nice even layer I’m gonnaget my grill grates on and if you dohave grates that have these openingslike this I’m gonna position them sothat you can add more coals later onpotentially you might not have to butyou definitely want to be able to addsome wood all right and so then what I’mgonna do these greets are nice and cleanif they’re not you can you get a scraperlike this if they’re really cruddy whathelps is if you first cover the wholething with a lid let it preheat with thevents open so that it preheats kind of amaximum heat let it preheat for aboutfive minutesand then all the crud should come rightoff once the grill grates are hot butthis one’s pretty clean – why a greatgrill brush that’s the best kind ofgrill brush to use and so what I’m gonnado is I’m gonna get I have a little bitof oil here and some wadded-up papertowels and you dip them in the oil thisis kind of like you know seasoning yourskillet you want to get a layer of oilon there just so that thechicken is not gonna stick because youknow the chicken has sugar on it so thatcan tend to stick quite a bit and thenchicken skin just generally sticks onits own so you do want to oil them upnicely all right and then we just goright on on the cooler side of the grillso this is what’s called a two zone fireI’m a one zone fire would be if all yourcoals are sort of spread evenly acrossthe cooking surface a two zone fire iswhen you have all the coals on one sideand no coals on the other and thenthere’s a thing that we call a modifiedtwo zone fire and that’s where you havemost of the coals on one side but someof the coals on the other side and mostof them almost I would say about 99% ofthe time that I’m grilling and maybe 90%of the time I’m grilling I’ll use a twozone fire like this it’s good for lowand slow cooking because you getindirect heat but it’s also good forhigh heat cooking because you get areally concentrated zone of high heatover here but if your things start toflare up or overcook you can easilyshift them to the other side or you canrotate them around like that to get themoff the heat real real easily all rightso we got our chicken on I’m gonna gowith some wood some people tell you tosoak your wood your wood chunks or yourwood chips I have not found it makes anydifference at all so I don’t I’m goingwith Applewood here I’ll start with acouple chunks and then as those go downI will add some more so wood on you wantthe vents so chicken cooks relativelyfasting that’s like a 30 to 40 minutething so you don’t need to go super lowheat you know something like ribs orbrisket you go real low heat these oneswhich means that you would keep theevents mostly closed and use your coalsfor this one we’re gonna leave the ventsabout halfway open what I’m gonna leavethese top vents halfway open I’m goingto position it so that the vents areover the chicken that way as the heatgoes up into this thing it’s gonna seeit pulls air from the bottom it goes thehot air travels up and over that way andit kind of kind of creates a convectioncurrent that goes around this way andpulls the smoke over thechicken those chicken pieces which iswhat we want so there we go so I’m gonnaleave this sitting here for I’m gonnalet it cook for well we were aiming forthe chicken to be at about a hundredthirty degrees or so before we start tofinish it 120 130 degrees so I’ll beback in about half an hour or so allright so we’re gonna check on thischicken my hose so we’re looking forlike around 120 130 and that’s wherewe’re atyeah perfect around 120 to 130 that’sone we want to brush it with our sauceso this is also a homemade barbecuesauce but you can use really it you canuse your you know store-bought sauce isfine this sauce is made with a mixtureof chicken broth molasses ketchup drymustard vinegar brown sugar what else isin there some of this spice spice rub isin there some of the spice rub is inthere and I think that’s about it Ohsome also some grated onion and gratedgarlic again the recipe I’ll put it upI’ll scroll through it as I’m brushinghere I’ll show it to you on the screenand then I’ll also link in thedescription I’ll link to directly to therecipe on sir your seats so we’rebrushing the top side of this chickenhere okay and now the idea here youdon’t want to put on your barbecue saucetoo early when you’re when you’re makingbarbecue chicken because if you do it’llburn by the way this is like a KansasCity style barbecue so sort of sweet andsticky it’s what it’s what when youthink of what most people outside of theAmerican South when they hear barbecuethat’s what they think of althoughthey’re of course many other types butmany other styles of barbecue as wellbut this is kind of the sort of you knowif I went if I went to a cafeteria and Iordered barbecue something this is whatit would come out come out as sticky andsweet of course ours is gonna be a lotbetter than what you got in your scampcafeteria all right so first the chickencover up again and we’re gonna let it gofor anotherfive minutes so all right so you can seethe sauce it started to dry out a littlebit now we’re gonna add a second coatit’s just like painting a room you knowyou want to go on to multiple coats thatyou can build in that flavor in layersand that rub is kind of like your paintprimer kind of helps that flavor stickon there this brush is a little betterthan the last one I had there’s one ofthose oXXO silicone brushes which areyou know I find them to be nice theythey hold sauce well but they don’tdistribute sauce as evenly as a realgood quality sort of you know boarbristle brush does although you know theadvantage of these brushes is that theylast basically forever and you neverhave that problem where you accidentallyget like bristles on to your onto yourfood all right so at this point what I’mgonna do actually were gonna close upone more time and let it dry a littlebit longer let’s see where ourtemperatures at we want it to befinished at at least 100 155 260 degreesat the end and I think we’ll get thereeasily all rightI’m gonna do this for another five moreminutes all right so now we’re gonnacarefully flip this chicken overjust like that so that the sauce side isdown and then we’re gonna take thiswhole great spin it around set thechickens over the hot side yeah we’regonna brush that second side[Music][Applause]and I don’t know if you noticed but whenI put these drumsticks down initially Iposition them such that you knowdrumsticks there’s one side that hasmore skin than the other where you cankind of pull the skin over the top ofthe drumstick so I positioned it atleast a try to I might have missed upmessed up and one or two of them but I’dposition it so that that side was upfirst you always want to present youwith with barbeque chicken you want todo the presentation side that is a sidewith like the most skin thenicer-looking side you put that side upto start with that way it gets that itgets the most of the glaze and then itgets sort of crispy at the end we’regonna crisp these up over this coal overthe ends of these coalsall right so lid back on one last timefrom this is gonna go for one anothermmm about five more minutes all right Ithink we are pretty much done here justcheck on that yeah that’s what I’mlooking foryou knowoops nice alrightso this final side will just go for justlike like another two minutes or so andthen we’re ready what I’m doing is I’mserving this with this um this salad Imade so this was some leftover grilledgrilled corn from the other night that Icombined with some lime juice olive oilcote crumbled cotija cheese dicenectarines and peaches cherry tomatoesred onion and then I tossed that allwith some arugula that’s it very simplethen we’ll do is we’ll put this fromthat plate therethen these guys serve just like this sopeople who want extra sauce can have itpeople who like their chicken but peoplelike their chicken appropriately stickycan have it as is and people who want itextra sticky can get that extra saucewhat someone’s got a drone up ahead bythe neighbors neighbors definitely knowwhen I’m shooting out here so maybe theymaybe they’re spying maybe yeah I thinkthey actually watch my videos too thatthey do hi hi Benji I came I’ve Steveall right okay I’m on you want a littleyou want a little piece of chicken let’ssee if what can we grab for him there’sa piece of chicken that had a littlemeat sticking out okay you go on okay ohreallyokay shop yes who gets up to here youknow I’m gonna take a bite just so I cando my mmm thing for the camera all rightchar you readyyou were definitely ready threeall right shabu sit sit good girl no sitsit good girlI’ll take a bite then you can have abetter least shabu hmm hmm that is hotyou know it’s on the outside show Ialmost just called her tribal Galiciawhich is my daughter’s name that’s itgood girl all right see you later guysgals non-binary pals[Music]