Smoked Chicken Thighs

It’s hard to beat the delicious flavor profiles provided by Smoked Chicken Thighs. The combination of the seasonings and smoke from the 100% hard wood CookinPellets.com Premium Perfect Mix pellets will dazzle your taste buds. To ensure that you always achieve moist results make sure that you pick up bone-in skin-on chicken thighs. I noticed at Costco that they now have their own brand of chickens and chicken parts. At least here, in Northern California, Costco used to carry Foster Farms fresh chicken. Love Foster Farms cause their processing plant is only 40 miles South of my residence.

I have always been a strong advocate of keeping your wood pellet smoker grill as clean as possible for each and every cook. As such I always replace the heavy duty foil covering my heat shield pan and shop vac out any ashes in the fire pot & interior surfaces of the grill pit. If you’ve ever smoked/cooked poultry you have found that by the time you’re done there is quite a bit of grease/drippings everywhere from all the chicken fat that is melted during the cook. In order to facilitate the cleaning process I am using a heavy duty foil boat to cook the chicken thighs and trap all that grease/drippings. Check out all that grease that would normally collect on your heat shield rather than the foil boat. Besides, all that grease/drippings are ideal for a fantastic chicken gravy.

I like to trim the majority of the excess fat and skin from the bone-in skin-on chicken thighs. I then carefully peel back the skin for direct access to the meat. Rubbed under & on the chicken thigh skin with roasted garlic extra virgin olive oil. Seasoned under & on the chicken thigh skin with McCormick Grill Mates Montreal Chicken Seasoning and Pete’s Western Rub. You can find the recipe for Pete’s Western Rub on page 169 of my cookbook. The Wood Pellet Smoker & Grill Cookbook. Repeat the seasoning process on the back of each thigh. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 hours.

Preheat your wood pellet smoker grill to 180ºF with CookinPellets.com Premium Perfect Mix pellets and smoke the bone-in skin-on seasoned chicken thighs for an hour. After an hour of smoke, bump the pit temp to 400ºF to finish the cook and make the skin crispy. Cook at 400ºF for approximately 45 minutes until the internal temperature of the thigh at it’s thickest point reaches 180ºF. Allow the chicken thighs to rest loosely under a foil tent for 10 minutes before serving.