I was lured back into Save-a-lot even though I have strong negative feelings for the place ever since they sold me loin ends that had the tenderloins harvested. I was lured back by a sale on chicken quarters – 49 cents a pound for chicken quarters – we’re talking $5 for 10 pounds of dark meat. But I should have known. I should have been smarter and figured that the image they showed in their ad was fresh, delicious looking chicken quarters, and in reality it was going to be a frozen bloody bag of suspect, un-trimmed parts, hacked up with a machete with bone fragments and dander. (ok, not that bad, but basically)

The other reason I was lured back in was the bottom round roasts for $3 a pound, but I really wanted chicken, so I bought some bone-in breasts. I figured ‘hey, I’ll smoke these tonight, they’ll take 4 hours or so, that would work for a work night smoke fest!

They were actually in pretty good shape, I trimmed some of the skin back and they looked fine.

I put together a rub heavily influenced by coarse pepper, salt, paprika, garlic powder, added some remaining rub from a previous adventure, then some sage and oregano – kept it simple.

I stated a fire in my DynaGlo, and dropped the chicken on the upper grates. I dropped some hickory chips and pecan chunks onto the coals and shut the hatch.

I went back into the house and started breaking down the two, 3.5lb roasts into beef jerky thin slices. I got out the peppered garlic mix I got for christmas and mixed it in real good. I transferred everything into a ziplock bag, and went out to check my smoker. I started the fire when I put the meat on so it would slowly sneak up to temp – Surely we’d be close to temp by now, right? took me maybe a half hour to prep the jerky… I’m looking for a solid 225. What do I walk out to??

Holy crap what happened! 350!? Well, the wind had picked up something fierce, and my vents were fully open! I could hear sizzling from within the smoking chamber, all I could think was ‘dammit! 6 perfectly fine breasts down the drain!’ I opened the hatch and the chicken already looked like it was significantly cooked. I poked one of the breasts, and it appeared to still be a bit supple, so I slammed my vents closed and said ‘ok.. so I’m just using my smoker like a wood-fired oven – I’m oven roasting these chicken breasts, no big deal. In another half hour, the temp had dropped to about 250. I checked temp on 1 of the breasts, and it was about 145 degrees. I pull my chicken at 155ish and wrap in foil to rest. I decided that in a half hour I would do just that.

I know that might looked burned, but I can promise you that it was a delicious peppery bark that tasted great! Here’s a closer look:

I cut off the bone (gnawed on it later) and sliced it up into chunks.

It was so moist – and the skin was crispy – it was perfect!

I will admit that this was a huge screwup on my behalf, but I am so happy that I didn’t have to wait until 11pm to eat chicken tonight. It took about an hour and a half from lighting the fire to wrapping in aluminum foil – and now I have delicious chicken for the rest of the week and into the weekend!

score!