Chicken Advice/Help

John Bowen said:

I am in the brining school – you can get a lot of flavor in the meat with the right brine. I personally think that chicken doesn’t stay on the smoker long enough to get rich smoke flavor deep into the meat.
I also agree that you need to sauce the chicken last 15 min or so.

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Rich smoke flavor in the meat is easy, use a chart/lb for equilibrium brining. Take a whole container of kosher salt, spread it out on a pan, and smoke it in the same smoker with the same wood you plan on cooking your chicken with. Use the smoked salt for the brine. Chicken is cheap to experiment on, try it. Also make zipper cuts through the membrane of the chicken cavity where the tenderloin and thigh meat are. That's all I'm givin up. Good luck bro!

Thanks Jmoney. That sounds like what I'm going to try next time, along with all the advice from this thread. My one question is what do you mean by "zipper" cuts through the membrane?

I'm guessing you mean from the bottom side, make some cuts so rub/flavor gets through and into the meat?

Thanks again everyone.

I don't know if that's technically what it's called, that's how it was taught to me, so that's what I call it. Yes, the flavor gets deeper in to the meat that way