1. When trimming your chicken thighs, take away any of the large pockets of fat that sit along the edges of the thighs. This fat is too thick to render, so it will only result in gluggy, gross fat.
2. When choosing your chicken thighs, look for ones which have bright pink flesh and if they have skin still on-White skin, without blemishes and bruising. I go into this in much more detail within my Whole Chicken masterclass, you can find it HERE.
3. These skewers are awesome and especially good if you allow them to get a little bit of char along the edges. To help with this, try to space your charcoal out evenly along the skewer and experiment with how close you let the chicken sit, to the heat.
4. It is critical to make sure that chicken is cooking to a minimum of 165F to be safe. To help with this, try not to push the chicken too tightly together on the skewer. That way it gets a better chance to cook evenly.
5. Deboning a chicken thigh is pretty easy, so if you don’t buy thighs which are boneless and skinless, you see how I remove the bone out of a thigh in my Chicken Masterclass.
1. Remove fat from chicken thighs before slicing in half.
2. Mix together all marinade ingredients together until we’ll incorporated.
3. Marinade chicken thighs overnight before piercing on long skewers. You may need to use two skewers, to stop the meat from spinning as it cooks.
4. Set up your smoker for indirect smoking and place on a couple of pieces of cherry wood. You want to run the cooker at about 250F throughout the cook.
5. Place the skewers on the smoker, making sure that the two skewers aren’t touching-This will help the chicken to get even coverage.
6. Mix up baste ingredients and set aside. It will be significantly thicker than the marinade, but this is going to help it stick to the chicken flesh.
7. Every 20 minutes or so, baste the chicken thoroughly and flip. Try and do this as quickly as possible, because every time the lid opens, the temperature decreases.
8. Smoke until chicken hits an internal temp of 165F. It may have some crispy charred edges, but this is the best part of the dish (Just don’t get too much of it)
9. Once chicken hits the internal temperature, remove from heat and allow to rest for 20 minutes until serving.
10. Serve this one with your favorite crusty bread as a sandwich, or literally right off the skewer!