Bob's Grill Posted April 9, 2009 Report Share Posted April 9, 2009 Did my 1st cook today, chicken...slow cooked indirect, chicken was great!! Just one issue, outer meat was a little hard, you could pull the meat from it but was hard enough you couldnt eat it. Think i found the recipe here, cooked for 3 hours at 250, turned it and cooked for another hour and started hitting it with some sauce during the last 30 min. Any suggestions would be appreciated... doing a pork butt tonight.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conodo12 Posted April 9, 2009 Report Share Posted April 9, 2009 Hmmmm... I may be stepping out on a limb here but typically when the meat is so hard you can't eat it, we don't call that "great!"... You're settin' the bar a little low there Bob! OK, I'll turn off the sarcasm here. Please do know that we all like to poke fun once in a while and even enjoy it when the joke is on us too! So, that is a looonnnggg time to cook a chicken. You didn't give me a lot to go on, but even if was a full bird it would not take that long to cook. Was it a full bird or was it cut into pieces? When cut to pieces, I cook my chicken for about two hours @ 225 to 230f. That's it. For a full bird, I watch the temperature at the breast and thigh. More at the breast. When that breast hits 160f., it's done. You will pull the bird and let it rest for 10mins or so and the temp will continue to rise. Don't forget that the bacteria is dead at 150f. So in a nutshell, cook your chickens for less amounts of time and cook with an instant read thermometer. Now where are those pics??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firemonkey Posted April 9, 2009 Report Share Posted April 9, 2009 I agree that it cooked too long. Typically, I cook whole chickens in 75-90 minutes, and they come out with golden crispy skin and very juicy meat (recent pics in the everyday cooking thread). I do them on the upper grill at about 375 deg. It sounds like you were trying for more of a slow BBQ chicken. I would guess 275-ish temps for about 3 hours would get you there, but dont forget that low and slow BBQ chicken recipes are usually using dark meat (thighs). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linuxwrangler Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 ...instant read thermometer... Yup, in terms of cooking improvement per dollar spent, my Thermapen is one of my top cooking investments. I try to pull pork-chops and pork-loin at 137 which is, from my reading, the temperature at which trichinosis is killed (as though trichinosis were still a significant problem). I figure the additional few degrees of rise after I pull it is my safety-margin and it sure beats tough dried-out pork. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
