Whole Smoked Chicken: Cooking Temps and Doneness Secrets for Success (2024)

Smoking a whole chicken: oh, sure, we all thought about it, but only we had the guts to do it! Wait, that’s not true. No, people everywhere love smoking whole chicken. And why wouldn’t they? A smoked chicken makes a fine meal for your family, and if you have room in your smoker, making more chickens is almost as easy as making only one. Boom. Dinner party.

But if you’re going to smoke a whole chicken, you want it to come out tasty, juicy, and tender—properly cooked throughout—not dry, tough, or flavorless. And for that we need, you guessed it, temperature control! Here we’ll give you the thermal tips you need for perfect whole smoked chicken. Make one for your family tonight, or make a couple for a fun dinner party next week—either way, you’ll love how it cooks up when you take temperature into account. Let’s get down to it.

Smoked chicken difficulties and solutions

Smoked chicken is manifestly tasty. I mean, it’s chicken, so it has that going for it already, but then you add the delicious flavor of smoke and you end up with something even better than before. But not all smoked chickens live up to their potential.

A chicken that is left in the smoker to cook until “the legs wobble” or “the juices run clear” will almost certainly be dry. And we all know that smoked chicken skin is not the greatest culinary delight known to man. It can be rubbery and flabby, not words that describe how I want my food to feel.

Luckily, there are solutions to both problems, and temperature is a big part of those solutions.

For juicy meat that isn’t dried out, we need need to actually monitor the temperature as we cook. Using a leave-in probe thermometer like Smoke X2™ allows you to see the internal temperature of your bird as it changes, and the alarms let you know when it’s time to act to prevent the meat from drying out. Of course, you still need to verify that temperature with an instant-read thermometer—Thermapen® ONE being the best bet. (I rarely hit the thermal center correctly with my probe, and I cook a lot of birds.)

The rubbery skin has a two-part solution. First, dry-brining helps a lot. Seasoning your chicken 4–12 hours before you cook it and allowing the seasoning to pull water out of the skin will help the skin cook more crisply. The other prong is a two-stage cook. Cooking the meat gently to impart smoke flavor and then turning up the heat to render and crisp the skin is the way to go.

Smoker temps for smoked chicken

If the secret to juicy chicken is temperature-based, and the secret to non-flabby skin is also temperature based, then we should talk about some temperatures, shouldn’t we? First, we need smoke to get into our chicken, so we need to cook at a smoking temperature. Cook your chicken at 225–250°F (107–121°C) for an hour to imbue the meat with smoky goodness.

The slow smoking not only gives us flavor, but it also cooks the meat quite gently for that first hour. Once that’s done, though, it’s time to crank up the heat. Using Billows™ BBQ Control Fan to control your temperatures really comes in handy here, because you can simply change your fan-control temperature and get up to your new temp easily and without lots of fussing with vents, etc. You’re aiming for 350–375°F (177–191°C). At those high temps, your chicken skin stands a chance of crisping, and that’s what we want!

Doneness temps for smoked chicken

Chicken breast meat dries out super easily, so we want to be careful to not overcook it. When you probe the chicken, set the high-temp alarm in the breast for 157°F (69°C). Yes, that is a safe temperature! Not only will there be carryover, but even without it, chicken is safe at that temperature after only a few extra seconds. (Read more about chicken doneness temperatures.) The lower pull temp will help ensure much, much juicier meat.

This is a simple, wonderful cook that I hope you add to your regular rotation. There are no bells or whistles, it’s just a good, properly cooked chicken, and that’s all it needs to be. Get those temperatures right, use the two-stage cook to improve the skin texture, and you’ll have something you’ll be proud to serve to guests, or delighted to eat yourself.

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For more on smoked chicken, see this post on smoke-roasted chicken with a lemon-breadcrumb stuffing.

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Smoke X2 Thermometer