3 Day Dry Rubbed Jerk Chicken

Been doing this style chicken for a couple years. Got 2 chickens on Tuesday morning and applied my dry rub liberally...what they looked like early this afternoon:



The battery in the camera died but in the bowl I had these in there was about a fifth of a cup of juices. You gotta leave the chicken for 3 days to get this....I checked the chicken yesterday and there was only about a tablespoon or so of juice. My rub consists of salt, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, dried onion chunks ground up, granulated garlic, paprika, mango chipolte powder, red pepper flakes, thyme and roasted ginger. The salt level is about what I would dust cooked food with...so not too much and not too little. As to total amounts of the above ingrediants.....I never measure, just taste and adjust. I'd say a forty percent of the total amount are the big 4 carribean spices....allspice, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon with about 50% of this being allspice. Just when you think you have the blend right add some more fresh ground allpice berries into the rub to finish her off is what I usually end up doing.

It was raining out so I had to put the cookers at the edge of the garage:



I used a combo of bourbon cask chunks and black cherry with Basque and RO Blue lump. I smoked the chicken in the black kettle for a couple hours or so at about 220f or so. I transfered to the blue kettle for the finish at a internal of 152f on the thigh meat. Just before the transfer:



Staring with the skin side down I moved the chicken on and off the coals but most of the time in the zone adjacent to the coals:



Done with 2 probes showing 178f abd 182f:



A platter shot:



By this time the light in the house was terrible so these last 2 have flashes:



Juicy:



Finish with some Sweet and Spicy Scotch Bonnet Sauce along with some orange Hot Scotch Bonnet Sauce from the fine folks at Grace. I was picking the wife's bones clean when she had "finished". She never picks those small tidbits from the inside of the bones or more importantly those little flaps on the underside of the breast and thigh bones. Can you imagine? All the better for Old Hoss as I get doubles of those cuts. Tiss good to be a guy with 11 cookers.

toymaster said:

Chicken looks great but I would have pulled it off the grill at 165-170. I cook my chicken with the dark meat facing the fire so the white meat doesn't overcook. Just my.02

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Had the dark meat facing the fire for almost all of cook as well...just that little bit in the end when I was rotating did the breast meat get close to the heat. I used to pull at about 170f but would occasionally get some pink on the bone so I moved up. This meat could have been pulled abit sooner...and I should have moved to the heat from the smoker sooner as my skin was not quite bite through. The flavours of the rub and smoke were deep in the meat though.

bigabyte said:

Is there much salt in that rub?

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Not a heck of alot. When I taste the rub the amount of salt would be about the amount you would dust cooked food with....so it is balanced. There is more cinnamon, allspice, cloves and nutmeg forsure and more garlic, onion and paprika as well. Sorry I do not have total amounts but I always just start with what looks right and adjust to taste when putting rubs together. Because the rub is on the meat for so long I intentionaly put less salt in my jerk rub than a rub I would put on pork butt or ribs or brisket. I use the same jerk rub on pork shoulder the same 3 days and it is outstanding.