The Big One - Inaugural Smoke

I was lucky to add a 22½ inch Weber Smokey Mountain to my collection. Ever since I've been dying to fire it up. With an adequate supply of pulled pork, ribs and brisket in the freezer I cannot justify smoking any of those. What I need is some fowl! (OK, I smoked a couple chickens in the mini not two weeks ago, but that will not last that long!) Jewel had BOGO sale on chicken including Perdue roasters. Not cheap at $1.99/lb but at half price I felt they were reasonable for their size. I picked up four eight pound chickens - the largest I could find. Instead of getting eight chickens, I got a twenty pound Butterball turkey to go on the other grate.

Weather is C-O-L-D - probably the coldest day so far this winter. It was 10° F when I got up and almost 20° when the turkey went on. Wind is nil reported at 6 mph.

The turkey is a frozen Butterball so it is already injected - no need to brine. I put it in a cooler in a water bath to hasten thawing. The chickens on the other hand have "at most three percent retained water." (I guess that's water they manage to seal in the cryovac bag to bump the weight by three percent.) The chickens get a brine consisting of:

• 2 C pickling salt
• 1 C sugar 
• 6 C apple juice
• 2 C orange juice
• 1 C lemon juice
• 1 C lime juice
• Sufficient water to bring volume up to 2 gallons.

The chickens were put in a Reynold's turkey size oven bag in a 5 gallon plastic bucket and the brine poured over them. This was all a perfect fit in that the oven bag is a perfect size to line a 5 gallon bucket, the chickens just barely fit inside the bag in the bucket and the brine came about ½ inch below the top edge of the bucket. (I guess I have just over 3 gallons of chicken by displacement.) The bucket was put with the turkey in the basement where the temperature is about freezing. Chickens went into the brine about 11:00 PM and will brine over night. Before they go on the cooker, I stuffed some orange rinds, onions and rosemary and sage into the body cavities of the birds.

These will be cooked on my new (to me) 22½ inch WSM. The turkey will go on the bottom rack since it is expected to take longer while the four chickens will go on top. I plan to use a dry water bowl lined with foil. There is no benefit to holding low temperature with fowl. This will give me a chance to see what temperatures are typical in the larger WSM. I will fire with Kingsford Blue and add some apple, cherry, mesquite and a little hickory for smoke. I will use the Minion method to light the charcoal so I won't get the raging 500º start that I get with two lit chimneys on the 26 inch kettle. This will be more a smoke than a roast. Update on the fire prep. I was not able to use the igniter on my Performer. Also I had to abandon mesquite smoke as the mesquite chinks were in the bin on the Performer. After I closed the smoker up, I left two bottom vents wide open and a third closed. That produces a pretty reasonable temperature for fowl.

Update on plans... The coating of ice on the performer prevented access to the storage bin on my Performer and that is where the mesquite is. No mesquite. I used apple, cherry and hickory for smoking wood.

As it turned out that four eight pound chickens will not fit on a 22½ inch grate. The turkey fit fine.

But even three chickens were a little tight.

So I quickly set up the mini to handle the overflow.

Here is the temperature profile and notes for the cook in the 22½ inch WSM.

time	temp	comment
11:15AM	°	Turkey on the smoker!
11:40		Three of four chickens on! That's all that fits. I'm quickly firing up the mini to handle the fourth. Before opening the cooker to put these chickens on I noted that the bottom grate was already over 300°
12:03	88°/311°/62°/271°/? (trk/bgr/chk/tgr/lid)
12:10	91°/315°/71°/273°/245/?
1:30 PM	142°/340°/126°/285°/?
2:04	154°/327°/142°/276°/250°	Could the turkey finish before the chickens? Or do I have the probe in not the best spot - maybe not a good reading.
2:30	162°/315°/151°/270°/240°	Opened cooker and checked turkey with WW and got ~140°. I tried to relocate the probe but now getting an even higher reading. I'll trust that the turkey will not be overcooked when the chickens are done.
3:10	171/273º/163º/256º/	Chicken off!
3:24	172º/?/-/-/250º	Turkey probes at 151º deep in the breast. Relocated the ET-732 probe to that location.
4:03	162/282/-/-/?	Turkey coming off!

Temperature readings are (trk/bgr/chk/tgr/lid) => (turkey breast/bottom grate/chicken/top grate/lid) Turkey and bottom grate are via Maverick ET-732 while top grate and chicken are via old reliable ET-73. The lid is the factory installed thermometer in the cooker.

The following time/temperature record is for a single chicken in the mini-WSM. All electronics are in use on the 22½ WSM so this will be monitored via the lit thermometer and near finish, using the Taylor Weekend Warrior quick reading hand held.

The fire is prepared using briquettes and I'm using some pecan for smoke wood. All vents are wide open as this seems to produce a pretty good temperature for smoke-roasting fowl.

time	temp	comment
12:10	225°	Bird on!
2:11	300°/136°	Closed bottom vent to about half. Going a little faster than I wanted.
2:30	260°/142°	Better.
3:14	260/160	Bird off!

This is what the birds looked like when I checked turkey temperature.

The birds picked up even more color before they were done.

All of the birds were great - flavorful and moist. None of the temperature indicators popped. The chickens were a tad salty. Next time I brine that long, I should rinse for about 15 minutes to leach out some excess salt. The stuff in the body cavity smelled great but I'm not sure how much it contributed to the flavor. The smoke flavor on the turkey was subtle. I wonder if a slower smoke would make a difference. I pulled the chicken and turkey and have a lot to freeze as well as lots of bones and skins to make a nice stock.

Soak the brined birds for about 15 minutes to leach excess salt.
Try shoving herbs under the skin instead of the body cavity.
Maybe cook at a lower temp for more smoke flavor. But it's hard to fault these birds. Maybe only for a turkey.

Chickens - first smoke of the new year

I had hoped to fill the 22.5 Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) with chickens for it's inaugural smoke. Unfortunately the grocers have not cooperated. The best price I can find for whole chickens is 89¢/lb and they were small at about 4 lb. I went with a pair of birds from Sam's Club at 99¢/lb and about 6½ lb. What I didn't realize was that they were so called enhanced birds. As I rinsed the birds prior to brining, I noticed the skin over the breast peppered with little holes. I looked carefully at the cryovac the birds were packed in and saw they were enhanced with up to 12% "natural broth." Ugh! I had already prepared the brine so I went ahead and put the birds in. They will be double brined I suppose.

OK, here's my gripe with Sam's Club. These are cryovaced birds packed two to a bag and then weighed and labeled. On the left is Sam's Club sticker. Note at the top it states "TWIN WHOLE CHICKENS 1009% NATURAL" You would think that means no 'enhancement'. You (and I) would be wrong. The inner packate states "Flavor and Tenderness enhanced with up to 12% Natural* Chicken Broth" On the other side the broth incredients include (in addition to chicken broth) 2% or less of Sea Salt and carageenan. Sea salt and carrageenan do not naturally occur in chicken! I really need to start reading these labels a lot more carefully. So... 1/8 of my chicken is salt water that probably had some chicken bones (and other 'parts') waved over the pot.

Weather at start is 35° and sunny with wind brisk at 17 mph. (I'm using the covered gasser as a wind block.) Near finish temperature has dropped to 31° and wind is down to about 14 mph.

I made a gallon of brine using water, a ping of apple juice, juice from two lemons, juice from 5 desiccated limes (I hesitate to use the term 'fresh' as the skins were like leather.) Added to this is a cup of pickling salt and ½ cup sugar. Birds went into the brine about 11:30 AM and came out about 3:30 PM. I didn't do any more seasoning of the birds preferring to rely on the smoke for flavor.

This is going on the mini-WSM. I used mostly Grove Lump and a little blue bag briquettes. For smoking wood I chose apple, cherry and a little mesquite. It turned out that there was insufficient clearance for the chicken under the lid so I split the bird on the top rack.

I'm using my ET-732 for the first time on this cook. I'm also not working at controlling temperature. Both top and bottom vents are wide open and there is no water in the bowl. After closing the cooker the temperature spiked at about 360° and has settled to about 330° a couple minutes later. It still seems to be dropping.

time	temp	comment
3:40 PM		Birds on!
4:00	66°/324° (meat/cooker)
4:47	138°/349°	Moving right along...
5:38	158°/322°	Almost done.
5:53	162°/318°	Cooker seems to be dropping faster than the bird is gaining. I'll stir the fire a bit. (There were still plenty of coals.) The skin on the leg on the split bird was just starting to pull back so I'll give it a couple more minutes and call it done.
6:03	163°/302°	Time for the split bird to come off. I'll move he meat probe to the whole bird.
6:21	162°/331°
6:36	167°/349°	Bird done and off.

The birds came out good. Skin was not crisp but far from the rubbery texture that a low 'n slow produces with fowl. It was noticeably salty but not unpleasantly so. It took on a light amber color and pleasant smoky flavor.

Next time read the labels more carefully! also consider dropping the top grate an inch or so to provide additional head space under the lid. The relatively high heat cook seems to be fine for the bird. I didn't really see deficit compared to slowing the cook down. 

Boxing Day Ribs

And possibly the last smoke of the year. Time for some ribs. I had 6 slabs frozen from when they were on sale. I thawed them all out for a Boxing Day smoke.

Winter seems to have arrived and the temperature is 31° and it's cloudy. Occasionally we'll get some snow during the day. It's windy as well with winds reported at 18 mph out of the NNW. At 4:00 PM the wind is up to about 25 mph and can be heard occasionally howling. (gusts over 30 mph.)

I plan to do something different today. I just watched a competition on TV and every competitor wrapped their ribs part way through. I'm going to do a 3-2-1 (3 hours on the smoker, foil and hydrate for 2 hours followed by another hour unwrapped and perhaps add some sauce.

Though I trimmed the ribs a bit, I didn't do the St. Louis style trim so they wound up overlapping on the smoker. Hopefully that's not a problem. I will be moving them when I foil and again when I remove the foil for the last stage. While foiling I plan to add some apple juice and beer (but not both) to some of the ribs to see if that makes a difference.  (Probably 2 beer, 2 apple juice and 2 w/out.) I also did something else I've not done in the past - added salt and sugar to my rub. Not a lot really, but enough to perhaps make a difference. One more thing... I'll sort of stagger the removal from the oven  so that I can sauce the two top ribs and they will be beer and apple juice braised during the foiled period. That way I'll get to taste them with and without sauce. I'll try the toothpick method to mark them again.

I used a rub based on previous efforts with the primary exception that I actually added salt and sugar. Actual constituents were:

• 1 Tbsp Thyme
• 2 Tbsp ground Sage
• 2 Tbsp Rosemary
• 2 Tbsp Oregano
• 1 Tsp Chili Chipotle powder
• 2 Tsp ground Cumin
• 1 Tbsp Ancho powder
• 1 Tbsp Onion powder
• 1 Tbsp Mustard powder
• 1 Tbsp whole Mustard powdered
• 2 Tbsp Garlic powder
• 2 Tbsp Kosher Salt
• 1/3 C Brown Sugar

I mixed in enough peanut oil in to make a slurry. 

The ribs were on the small size - likely a grower harvesting his herd a little early due to the drought problems. They all had a bit of the sternum attached so I cut that off and then trimmed about 3 more ribs from that end of each rack. It is interesting to note that all of the ribs came from the same side of the pig. I wonder what they do with the ribs from the other side of the pig.

The main rack pieces will go into the 18" WSM which has been equipped with a third grate positioned between the other two. That will put two racks on each grate. The trimmed pieces are going into the mini (converted WSM from a Smokey Joe.) The breast bone pieces are on the botton stacked like Lincoln logs three across in two layers. ;)

I'm using a Maverick ET-73 to measure the smoker temperature in both smokers. The meat probe is in the mini and the regular cooker probe is in the WSM. With ribs I really don't need to measure meat temperature.

Ribs in the WSM

time	temp	comment
11:15 AM		Meat on!
11:40	172°
12:11 PM	181°	Time to add more air I think. Went from one bottom vent to two bottom vents wide open.
12:55	261°	nice recovery.
1:10	288°	Closed one of the bottom vents to half.
1:45	278°
2:35	264°
2:45	250°	Ribs foiled and put in a 250° oven for 2 hours. (Empty cooker is at 255°. closing down to one vent part open.) There was still plenty of water in the pan.
4:00	197°	Will open up and stoke the fire before putting ribs back on this smoker.
4:20		Lifted the middle section off to add more charcoal and smoking wood.
4:33	128°	I'm going to lift the middle section to allow the fire to rekindle a bit more.
4:55		Meat back on the smoker. Some of it was pretty much done already. It cooked a lot while in the foil. Closed bottom vents to one full open.
5:18	224°
5:36	204°	Meat off!

Rib trimmings in the miniWSM

time	temp	comment
11:20		Meat on!
11:40	167°
12:11 PM	192°	While opening bottom vents on the WSM I straightened the middle of the mini. That seems to have resulted in dropping temps.
12:40	150°	Opened the bottom vent almost full.
12:57	166°
1:10	175°
1:44	181°
2:35	149°
2:45	143°	Added some more smoking wood and more lump.
3:15	188°
4:00	196°	Moving along just fine.
4:20		Rearranged the riblets on the top grate for better exposure. They look nearly done (meat pulling back on the bones.)
4:33	243°
4:40		One of the packages in the oven is leaking and smoking the place up so oven off - time to unwrap these and put them on the fire. (Reassemble the WSM now)
4:55		Meat off!

Foiling the ribs almost overcooked them. They all produced liquid - even the ones that had no liquid added when foiling. The liquid washed away some of the smoke flavor. Here is what the tips looked like when ready to come off the mini.

Here is a comparison of the tips and a slab that was foiled.

1. Don't foil every blasted slab. Try one or two slabs.
2. Cool foiled ribs at 225° (not 250°)
3. Foil ribs meat side up to reduce leaching of the smoke and rub flavors.

First Friday Turkey

This is another turkey - I'm grilling it (with some smoke) for First Friday. I started with an injected Butterball(tm) turkey so I don't need to brine it. I plan to roast using Alton Brown's suggestion to roast at 500° F for half an hour, tent the breast with foil and lower temp to 350° and continue until the breast reads 161° F. In the past I've smoked these but the skin comes out rubbery and I don;t think the bird really benefits. I suppose I should give smoking another shot after grilling/roasting a couple.

We're at 41° F under cloudy skies and with light (10 mph) winds. Rain could start before the cook is done.

As noted this bird comes pre-brined. I simply thawed it and stuffed some sliced apples, onions and celery in the cavity. I added some fresh sage and rosemary form the garden to that. Inside I have the neck and giblets in hot water to make some gravy.

This cook is (again) being done with the 26" kettle. I have a drip pan under the bird that is surrounded with two chimneys of lit lump. I tucked in a couple pieces of apple and cherry in between the drip pan and coals. After a few minutes I recalled that I wanted to use some mesquite also and dropped them in top of the lit coals along the edge (by the grate handles.) I'm measuring cooker and breast temperature using a remote reading Maverick ET-73. The ET-73 cooker temperature only reads up to 410° F so I have to guess if I'm hitting my desired 500° F for the first half hour.

time	temp	comment
3:20		Turkey on the grill
3:25	HHH	Within a few minutes the cooker temp on the ET-73 is over scale so I removed it. I need a higher reading thermometer for high heat cooks! And this is with the lid on and both vents wide open.
3:28		Opened the lid to add mesquite chunks and put the cooker probe back in. Quickly reads HHH again so I pulled it again. I measure surface temps up to 425° using an IR thermometer.
3:51		Time to bring down cooker temperature. Tented the turkey breast, closed bottom vent to about 1/2 and closed the top vent a little. I also threw in a couple more pieces of apple and cherry. Temp is dropping slowly so I closed the bottom a bit more. It's hard to tell since the closure for the bottom vents does not seem to fit very well. I closed the top vent to about 1/2 as well. Lid temp was over 340° so I don't think that the cooker temperature is down to 350°.
4:05	87°/401° (meat/lid)	Closed the bottom vent to a sliver and the top a little more as well. Need to watch to avoid overshooting and losing too much fire.
4:12	95°/348°	Opened the top vent fully and the bottom about half. Temp started climbing again so I closed things down a bit more.
4:33	117°/387°	Closed the bottom vent a wee bit more. Need to watch for falling temps which means it is time to light more charcoal.
5:04	141°/351°
5:30	156°/345°	Added another chimney of charcoal. Probably not needed but once lit it must be used. Closed the bottom vent a bit to compensate for the extra heat.
5:38	161°/359°	Turkey off!

Here is the bird after a half hour prior to tenting and cutting the temperature.

And after resting a bit after it came off the grill.

The bird was very good. It got compliments all around and one of the party goers claimed repeatedly that it was the best turkey she ever had. One of the things I did was an extended rest since I needed to transport. To maintain maximum heat, I

• preheated the roasting pan.
• held in a warm oven until ready to leave (about 1/2 hour) 
• prewarmed the cooler using hot water.

The result is that the breast temperature after holding for 1/2 hour in a warm oven followed by an hour in a picnic cooler was 170°. That's almost too much. 

One thing I need to watch is the ET-73 temperature probe during the hottest part of the cook. The heat is high enough to damage it. As far as the bird goes, I have no regrets.

Thanksgiving 2012

Note: This was cooked the day after thanksgiving but I procrastinated publishing...

Turkey again this year. Got a 19 pounder from Ho-Ka Farms via Valli Produce. It seems big but I guess it will be fine. This year I plan to roast it in the big grill instead of the smoker. That should allow some what higher initial temperature ala Alton Brown's recommendation for 500° for the first half hour. I can still throw some wood chunks on the coals for some additional smoke flavor.

Weather conditions for the cook are truly awful. I suppose hard rain would be worse. Temperature at the time of meat on is 29° F and wind is howling out of the Northwest at 25 mph with gusts to 35. I set up in front of the garage to get a little wind shelter. The sky is mostly cloudy

I'm brining the turkey with:

• 1 gallon apple cider (recipe called for vegetable broth but I substituted.)
• 1 cup pickling salt
• 1 tablespoon black pepper corns
• 1/2 tablespoon whole allspice
• 1/2 tablespoon powdered ginger (recipe called for candied ginger but we had none)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 stick of cinnamon.

I boiled the brine and allowed to cool. Before adding to the bird, I added about 1/2 gallon of ice cubes.  The brining is taking place in a Reynold's roasting bag in a 5 gallon bucket. Turkey goes into the brine at 1:00 PM the day before. (We're serving our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday this year because that's when everyone can make it.) Bird is out of the brine at about 10:30 AM and I microwaved an orange, apple and a couple small onions to stick inside the cavity along with sprigs of sage, rosemary and thyme.

The cook will be on the 26 this year. I'll put a double drip pan under the bird to see if that keeps the drippings from burning up so I can save them for stuffing and gravy. For fire I'll use Grove Lump and cherry and apple for smoking woods. (Maybe a little mesquite as well.) I started with two full chimneys of lump and put them around a doubled drip pan.

time	temp	comment
11:15 AM	°	Bird on! Within 15 minutes the dome temperature is reading 410° with the lid cracked about 1/2". A few minutes it is readint HHH which is over scale. I'll remove the probe.
11:45		Set the cover in place - this is expected to drop the temperature and the probe is back in the dome. Within a couple minutes temps were reading close to 390° so I closed the bottom vent down to about 2/3 to cut that back. Goal is 350°
12:15	308°/?	Time to light more charcoal!
12:45	377°	Temp recovering nicely after adding another chimney of lit lump.
1:27 PM	341°/143°	Meat probe in the breast now. Moving right aling (need to tent w/foil.)
1:52	291°/158°	Turkey nearly done - lighting another chimney for the root vegetables.
2:15	?/162°	Turkey off the fire and resting.

Turkey was good. The wings were a little crispy  since they were sticking out over the fire but I like that anyway. Breast not too bad but could still have been juicier.

Next time I might not stick the wings out but instead tie them up.

Fishing Food

Our annual trip to Redwing Minnesota to stalk the wily walleye on the Mississippi river is only days away. I'm responsible for food and I need to smoke! We'll have pulled pork and beef brisket as a portion of our menu. In addition I bought a bunch-O-chicken thighs to grill. One of the things I also plan to make is buffalo chicken mac & cheese. I can make that with either the grilled chicken or pulled pork. Both came out pretty good. maybe I'll do a split recipe and make some of each. I also bought a ham that I'll smoke to enhance the flavor. I plan to use both the ham and chicken for lunch as well.

That's 14 lb of beef and 14 lb of pork. I didn't pick them that way. I just chose packages that looked like what I wanted.

Temperature is 41° at 10:30 and wind is very light at under 5 mph. the sky is cloudy. (Good weather conditions for a smoke!) By evening the temperature dropped to freezing.

For the I'm using Raichlen's coffee rub which you can see at Raichlen's Primal Grill web site. For the pork, I went with:

• 1 Tbsp black Pepper
• 1 Tbsp Rosemary
• 1/2 Tbsp Coriander
• 1 Tbsp Hungarian Paprika.
• 1 Tbsp Ancho powder
• 1 Tsp Cayenne pepper
• 1/2 Tbsp Cumin
• 2 Tbsp Garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp Onion powder
• 1 Tbsp Mustard powder

This is going on the WSM where I'm using Grove lump (from Woodmans') and for smoking wood: mesquite, hickory, apple, black walnut, oak and box elder. During the cook I threw a couple pieces of cherry in that I had sitting around. I started with about a gallon of hot tap water in the bowl. The meat probe of the ET-72 is in the thickest part of the brisket on the lower grate.

Using the Maverick ET-73 for temperature measurement with the meat probe in the thickest portion of the brisket. The brisket itself had to be cut into two pieces to fit on the lower rack. I can monitor the butts using a instant reading thermometer but I expect the brisket to be done first.

10:10 AM		Lit coals on smoker and closed up. All bottom vents wide open.
10:20		Meat on! (grate and lid temp about 220°) Closed two vents fully and one vent to about 1/2.
11:00	52°/197°/190° (meat,grate,lid)	Looking good. Cold meat is dragging the temps down but that's OK. I'm not in a hurry.
11:42	87°/180°/185°	Open the 1/2 open bottom vent a little bit - to about 3/4.
1:09 PM	133°/175°/175°	Stirred the coals a bit.87°/180°/185°
1:30	134°/170°/170°	Temp still falling off so I threw a bit more coal in and blew some air in the bed to fire it up and opened another bottom vent.
2:30	156°/218°/?	Better.
3:45	171°/216°/?
4:40	172°/207°/220°
5:00	170°/207°/210°	Stirred the coals a bit and threw some cherry and box elder in.
5:47	166°/222°/?	Meat temp is a puzzlement.
6:34	164°/189°/190°	Threw in a couple more hands full of lump and pumped some air to get it fired up.
8:05	174°/314°/250°	Closed down to one bottom vent full open. Water bowl empty? Peeked in and pork looks like it's coming along.
8:59	190°/253°/210°	Peeked in and checked pork - butts are at 167°, 168°
9:40	192°/?/?	Beef off and meat probe switched to a butt. (now at 169°)
9:55	168°/206°/175°	More lump, more air.
11:00	169°/295°/230°
12:29 AM	180°/272°/230°
1:10	182°/242°/?	Pork taken out, wrapped in foil and put in a cooler to rest overnight.

Beef - seems a bit firm but tastes terrific! Pork is mouth watering and pulls apart easily.

I don't understand why the fire required so much tending. Maybe I should switch back to briquettes rather than lump. Or mix the two. Other than that, I don't think I would do anything differently.

Roadside Chicken - Mexican Style

Got a couple small chickens on sale ($0.88/lb) and weighed 7 lb between the two of them. And that's with no 'inclusions' as we typically get with whole birds. (IOW these are gutless birds.) I planned to make them on the little gas grill using the rotisserie and using the Roadside Chicken recipe. However when I looked it up I ran across this recipe for Mexican Roadside Chicken plagiarized from Rick Bayless. I [pretty much followed the recipe except that I used fresh oregano and added some fresh rosemary. I mixed the marinade and poured it over the birds in one gallon resealable plastic bags. I turned them over several times during the approximate 1 hour marinating time to distribute the marinade.

Weather was nice and sunny with a high of about 68°. Wind was light at about 8 mph.

I used my Weber Silver A with rotisserie to cook these. I put some apple, cherry and mesquite in a foil pack over the igniter (should be a hot spot) and also put a piece of hickory and mesquite on the flavorizer bars hoping they would smolder there rather than burn (which they did.)

I lit the grill and set the burner controls to medium. that proved to be too much heat so I turned them both to low and that held a decent temperature for the remainder of the cook. Maybe at the end I should crank it up again to crisp the skin.

time	temp	comment
16:20		Meat on the rotisserie. Both burners at medium.
16:30	400°	Cut both burners back to low. Wood in foil pack and directly on the flavorizer bars seems to be smoldering nicely.
16:50	340°	Both burners on low seem to do a decent job of holding temps at this level.
17:35	320°	Temp seems to be drifting down a bit. I probed the meat with an instant read thermometer and it was just below 160° on both birds.
17:57	°	Crank the heat up to crisp the skin!
18:02	580°	Chicken off!

Chicken came out pretty good. There was a definite smoky flavor and Southwest flavor. And the chicken was really juicy. Only downside was that the skin was not crispy. Oh,well. Maybe bringing the heat up a little sooner is required for that.