Chicken coated in Jeff's original rub, wrapped in bacon and threaded onto a long skewer is an easy and tasty treat that goes great with other grilled and smoked items such a burgers and hotdogs. Did I mention it’s wrapped in bacon?
Course Entree
Cuisine Hot Smoking
Prep Time 30 minutesminutes
Cook Time 2 hourshours
Total Time 2 hourshours30 minutesminutes
Servings 6
Author Jeff Phillips
Ingredients
6Chicken thighsskinless
Olive or vegetable oil
Jeff's original rub
1lbBacon
Skewerslong
Jeff's barbecue sauce
Instructions
Step 1: Remove all Visible Fat
Lay the thighs out on the cutting board and remove any visible fat with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors.
Step 2: Cut Chicken into Pieces
I tried to cut the chicken into pieces that are bite size but that is a very subjective term. Whatever you visualize as bite size, cut them that size. I got about 6-8 bites from each thigh.
Step 3: Add the Rub and Marinate
Put the chicken pieces into a zip top bag and pour about ¼ to ½ cup of olive or vegetable oil over the top of them.
Massage the bag to make sure all of the chicken is coated with the oil as this helps the rub to stick to the meat.
Add ½ cup of Jeff's original rub to the bag and, once again, massage the bag really well to coat all of the chicken.
Place the bag of rubbed chicken in the fridge for at least an hour but overnight would not hurt anything.
Step 4: Wrap and Stick
When the chicken pieces are finished marinating in the rub, pull them out of the fridge. They will smell really good but avoid eating them raw and definitely do not lick your fingers ;-)
I don’t like to be stingy with the bacon so I cut mine in half. You may be able to cut it into thirds if you wish as long as it will fit around your bite size pieces of chicken.
Lay a piece of the chicken on a piece of the bacon and roll ‘er up!
Push a skewer through the bacon wrapped chicken piece..
Do that about 5 more times on the same skewer.
Make as many skewers as you can with the chicken that you cut up.
Step 5: Smoke the Chicken Skewers
Set up your smoker for cooking at about 250°F if possible. Cooking these a little hotter will help the bacon to crisp up and chicken can definitely handle the higher heat just fine.
I used pecan just because it’s my favorite and it goes really well with a lot of things.. poultry is one of them.
As usual, to make it really simple, I loaded the finished skewers onto bradley racks. These racks are about 11 x 15 and if they will fit on your smoker grate, they are very, very handy to have.
Set the bradley rack on the smoker grate or you can place the chicken skewers directly on the smoker grate.
Smoke cook at 250°F for about 1.5 hours, sauce them real good then let them go another 30 minutes before taking them out of the smoker.
Use an instant read thermometer such as the Thermapen (reads in around 2-3 seconds) to check each piece and make sure it has safely reached 165°F.
Step 6: Eat ‘em Up
Pull them off the sticks to serve as appetizers or serve an entire skewer to each person as an entree with home fries or even some baked beans.