The Best Barbecue Chicken (Without a Recipe) | Basics with Babish

This episode is sponsored by ButcherBox. With ButcherBox, you can get high-quality meat and seafood delivered directly to your door. Choose from 100% grass-fed and finished beef, free-range organic chicken, wild-caught seafood, and pork raised grape-free. Sourced from farmers and fishermen dedicated to doing the right thing. For a limited time, new members receive four 6-ounce grass-fed and grass-finished top sirloin steaks free, in every box, for an entire year. If you want this deal, use my link in the description. 🎵Music🎵 Alright, first basics in a long, long time. And this one's basic indeed. A barbecue chicken with no recipe. You can use any chicken parts that you like, but make sure that they're bone-in and skin-on. If you got a whole bird, you can break it down into its core components using little more than a pair of kitchen shears. First, snipping out the spine and cracking things open. Cutting easily between the breast and the thigh, where there's virtually no bone or connective tissue. Trying to leave more skin on the breast than on the thigh. Then to separate the breasts, replacing a shallow snip at the base of the breastplate, cracking it open, and pulling out the dark red keel bone. Making it much easier to simply cut directly between the breasts, separating the two halves of the bird. Then you can leave the wings attached to the breasts for airline style. Or just like when you separate the thighs and the drums, you follow a thin strip of fat that runs around the joint and place exploratory cuts until you can fit the scissors between the bones. Once the chicken's chopped up, it's time to rub it down with spices. To eyeball barbecue dry rub, we start with mostly chili powder. Let's say about a third of a cup of the stuff. Chili powder and sweet paprika are very neutral, rounded, familiar barbecue flavors, so they make up most of the dust. Then if you're not using a smoker, I like to add a teaspoon of smoked paprika for, you know, smoke. And about a half teaspoon, or all that I have left, of cayenne pepper for a little bit of heat. Then a half teaspoon of cumin brings some floral, funky notes. A half teaspoon of oregano for grassy herbaceousness. And about a teaspoon each garlic powder and onion powder, both of which obviously bring essential foundational flavor. Then I like to add about a half teaspoon of crushed, dried rosemary. Normally I'm not a fan, but in barbecue spice rubs, they bring a really familiar, comforting flavor. And then damn near as much brown sugar as there are spices. Dry rubs and barbecue sauce are both laden with sugar. These sugars caramelize on the grill and balance out all the tang and spice, so it's pretty hard to overdo it. A few twists of freshly ground black pepper, and a few generous pinches of kosher salt. Make sure you taste your spice rub. You want it to taste almost equal parts sweet, spicy, and salty. Once you get the flavors where you like them, it's time to spread your dust evenly across every facet of your chicken. Top, bottom, and sides, rubbing it into and under the skin wherever possible. Cover this guy up with plastic wrap and let him sit in the fridge for at least a couple hours, ideally overnight. In the meantime, we can focus on our sauce. Barbecue sauce is also pretty easy to eyeball. It's usually around 60% ketchup, maybe 20% yellow mustard. And the rest is just flavors and sweeteners. A few dashes of hot sauce, any leftover barbecue rub, a pinch of garlic powder, a pinch of onion powder, a generous dash of Rochester sauce, fresh ground pepper, a pinch of kosher salt, and a big ol' glug of the sweetener of your choice. Molasses, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup. And then you can taste it for flavor and adjust. Just like the dry rub, it should be sweet, tangy, salty, and spicy. Bring this guy up to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes before putting to good use. Now we're headed out to the grill, where my grill grates really need to be seasoned. So I'm maxing out my burners and getting this whole thing ripping hot for about 15 minutes before giving the grates a thorough scraping with a wire brush, then turning off the heat and generously lubing the grates with a neutral-flavored oil like vegetable or canola. Crank the heat back on to max and let the oil cure on the grates for about 10 minutes. Now, by definition, barbecue is not barbecue without smoke. And the best way to do that on a gas grill is to make a smoke packet, placing wood chips or smoker pellets on a sheet of aluminum foil, wrapping them up tight into a wide, flat packet, and poking some holes in the top for smoke to escape. All of our pieces are in place, so now it's time to grab our chicken. As you can see, our dry rub has formed a beautiful layer on the outside of the chicken, which is not only gonna taste awesome, it's also gonna get sticky and crunchy when we sear things off towards the end. Now, we want to try to maintain a constant temperature, but the temperature gauges built into grills are notoriously unreliable. You can usually count on the temperature at the grates being about 100 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than whatever the gauge says. Since I want to smoke my chicken around 225, 325 is right where I want to live on the gauge. To achieve that temperature, I've got all the burners on the left side of the grill turned off. Only the far right burner is turned on. So the chicken is all going on the cool side of the grill. The dark meat is closer to the heat source because it's less prone to overcooking. Then I'm lifting up the grates over the active burner and placing our wood chip packet directly onto the heat shield over the burner. Depending on how hot your grill runs, you might just be able to put it right on top of the grates. But mine's pretty weak, so the packet needs that more direct heat exposure. So all the heat and smoke are being generated on this side of the grill and creating a gentle ambient cooking environment for the chicken on this side of the grill. So now comes the hard part, shutting this guy down, trying to maintain that temperature and resisting the urge to peak. If you find that the temperature is getting too low, crank up the burner on the right side. And vice versa if things are getting too hot. From this point on, there's only two reasons we open this grill. One, to occasionally spray down the chicken with apple juice. Not only is this going to create a nice moist cooking environment and add a nice flavor, but moisture helps meat absorb smoke. So especially given that this is hackyard barbecue, we want to maximize as much smoke flavor as we can. The other reason is to replace the smoke packet every 30 to 45 minutes. Once you stop seeing and smelling the good stuff lofting up from inside. The chicken usually smokes for about an hour and a half, so making three packets ahead of time is a safe bet. Once the chicken is starting to look dry and tight, take on some color and start temping it. Shuffling the pieces around and putting them closer to the heat source if they're not coming up to temp fast enough. I'm looking for 130 Fahrenheit in the thickest part of the breast, 140 in the dark meat. Smoking is a pretty hands-off process, so it's a good time to make some spicy slaw. I'm starting by halving and removing the core from one head of green cabbage, and then shredding it to your mouth preferences. I like a kind of chunkier slaw. And then for a less runny, extra crispy slaw, I like to brine the cabbage. Heavily salting a big bowl of ice water, whisking thoroughly to make sure that all the salt is dissolved, adding the cabbage, and letting it hang out in the fridge for one to four hours. This both seasons the cabbage and makes it extra crisp. Then for the dressing, the only way to go is homemade mayo. In a slender container the same width as the head of your immersion blender, we're combining a half clove of garlic, a whole egg, juice of half a lemon, no lemon seeds, that's... that's illegal, a half teaspoon of Dijon mustard, and a generous pinch of kosher salt. Blitz this a few times with your immersion blender until it is smooth, and then, keeping the blender head in the container, We're slowly streaming one cup of neutral oil, like canola or vegetable, down the side of the cup so that it settles on top of the egg. Then starting from the bottom and pulsing our way up, we're blasting the immersion blender on full speed, very quickly forming a smooth, creamy mayo. It's way better than anything you're ever gonna get out of a jar, and it comes together in about five minutes. Now to make the slaw, we're rinsing and then thoroughly toweling off our cabbage, and making a dressing from our homemade mayo. A little splash, a tablespoon or two of white wine vinegar. Then I want this to be a spicy slaw, so I'm gonna add a generous sprinkling of Cajun seasoning, roughly a tablespoon of white sugar, a few generous twists of freshly ground black pepper, and a healthy drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Whisk until homogenous, taste for seasoning, and then it's time to add the veg. We got our whole head of shredded cabbage, three stalks of celery, thinly sliced, one quarter red onion, thinly sliced, and three serrano chilies, thinly sliced. Mix it up until it's all evenly dressed, taste for seasoning, and fridge until ready to eat. Back outside on the grill, it's time to start painting and crisping. The chicken has reached its various target temperatures, so I'm coating it with barbecue sauce, and cranking up the heat directly under the chicken. After about five minutes, you should start to see and hear charring and sizzling taking place. Once the bottom's picked up some nice color, it's time to flip things over and char the skin. You're gonna lose a little bit of your gooey barbecue coating at this point, but don't worry, there's plenty of opportunities to paint it back on. Flip everybody over and close the grill down for another three to five minutes, until the skin starts to pick up some really nice dark color. Paint the bottoms and flip things back over one more time, giving our pieces one last coat of paint, and shutting things down to finish cooking. At this point, if the chicken isn't done yet, crank down the heat and let it finish coming up to temp. We're looking for breast to register 155 Fahrenheit, and dark meat to register 175. Plate up with extra sauce and a big pile of spicy Cajun slaw. And there you have it, barbecue chicken on a gas grill, no recipe involved, just tasting and testing as you go. And it is every bit as fantastic as it looks. Now, if you prefer to follow more specific directions, or if you're just starting out, we are gonna have a written recipe on the website. But barbecue chicken is a great opportunity to experiment and try things out as you go. There are plenty of moments when you can correct or augment, and even if things go terribly wrong, it's still gonna be pretty good. But when they go right, it's really, really good. Thank you again to ButcherBox for sponsoring this episode. With ButcherBox, you can stock your freezer with high-quality meat and seafood, making barbecuing and meal planning easier. You choose your box type and frequency, and they'll always ship your order for free in an eco-friendly box. For a limited time, new members receive four 6-ounce grass-fed and grass-finished top sirloin steaks free in every box for an entire year. If you want this deal, use my link in the description.