I started at 9:00am with a whole, 4 pound "Rocky Junior" range-fed chicken. I noticed there were three things different about this chicken: the skin was much more yellow than a normal bird; the very end of each the drumstick had been trimmed off; and the price--$1.99 per pound! There was a little metal badge attached to the wing indicating that this was an authentic Rocky Junior chicken. I kept thinking, "this bird better be good!"

I removed the neck and giblet package, trimmed the excess fat from around the cavity opening, rinsed thoroughly inside and out, and patted the chicken dry. I also folded the wing tips underneath the wings to keep them out of the way and to prevent them from burning during cooking. I left the chicken whole for the brining process and butterflied it later before cooking.

To learn more about selecting chicken, visit the Chicken Selection & Preparation page. For details on how to butterfly a chicken, visit the How To Butterfly A Chicken page.

The method of brining this chicken was a bit unusual. Most recipes call for you to add a measured amount of salt to water, along with other flavor ingredients, dissolve them completely, then add the meat. This recipe, however, uses a casual approach typical of the islands: measure out one cup of Hawaiian medium grain sea salt and rub it all over the chicken.

I started on the breast side and poured a generous amount of salt on the skin and rubbed it all over. I turned the bird over and did the same on the back side. I repeated this process several more times, front, back, and sides, until I had poured on and rubbed in the entire cup of sea salt.

Much of the salt did not stay on the chicken...it fell off onto the cutting board. That's OK, you only want what will stick to the surface of the bird. The final step was to scoop up a handful of salt off the cutting board surface (about 1/8 cup) and toss it into the cavity. Picture 1 shows how it looked when I was finished.

Now I turned my attention to a head of garlic, breaking it apart into cloves by striking it with the bottom of a heavy drinking glass. I struck each clove quickly with the glass to break the skin, then peeled it away. I smashed the cloves with the glass so they would impart their flavor when added to the brine mixture. Picture 2 shows the result.

The salt-rubbed chicken and garlic cloves went into a plastic container. Again, in its casual style, the recipe did not call for a precise amount of water to be used, nor did it require that all the salt be dissolved in the water. Just put the chicken and garlic in the container and cover with water. It turned out that I used 3-1/4 quarts of water to cover the chicken, and I estimated that 1/2 to 2/3 cup of salt made it into the container either on or inside the chicken. This ratio of salt to water makes this brine a little on the weak side compared to others that usually call for 1 cup of salt to 1 gallon of water.

I used a heavy ceramic bowl to keep the chicken submerged in the container, as seen in Picture 3. It went into the refrigerator for two hours, then I stirred the chicken in the brine and turned it end-for-end, and it went back in for another two hours of soaking.

At the end of four hours, at about 1:15pm, I removed the chicken from the brine, gave it a quick rinse inside and out, patted it dry, and discarded the brine solution. I butterflied the chicken for cooking, rubbed olive oil over the skin, and sprinkled just a little Hawaiian sea salt and some freshly ground black pepper on both sides of the chicken.

Picture 4 shows the butterflied and seasoned chicken. I let it sit at room temperature for 45 minutes until I put it in the cooker.

If you're interested in learning more about brining, visit the All About Brining page.

At 12:40pm I began firing up the cooker using the Standard Method. I lit a full Weber chimney of Kingsford charcoal briquettes, spread them evenly within the charcoal ring, then added 1/2 of a chimney full of unlit briquettes on top of the lit charcoal.

The coals were hot and covered with gray ash by 1:30pm. I placed six split pieces of dry kiawe on the coals, as shown in Picture 1. I assembled the cooker, added cool tap water to the pan, put the lid on the cooker, closed all the bottom vents and left the lid vent fully open. The lid vent will stay open throughout the entire cooking process.

At 2:00pm the cooker is at 290°F. I put the butterflied bird on the top grate, keeping it away from the hot edges of the grate, then replaced the lid on the cooker.

My plan is to cook this chicken for 3-1/2 to 4 hours in the 250-275°F range, a little hotter than normal in the hopes of getting better skin. At 2:30pm the cooker temperature has dropped to 255°F, so I open all three bottom vents to 50%. It's sunny and clear, with no breeze and a temperature of 85°F.

The cooker stays around 275°F for an hour, then dips to 267°F. I open the bottom vents more but the cooker temp doesn't increase. That's OK, I'm still in my 250-275°F target range.

I won't take any internal temperature measurements of the chicken during cooking. I've cooked enough chicken to know it will be properly done if I maintain my target temperature range for around 4 hours.

Here's how the temperature and vent settings went for the cooking session:

Note that the vent percentages represent the way I set the vents at the time indicated.

At 4:00pm I'm halfway through the cooking process. I open the cooker for the first time since the meat went on so I can turn and baste the meat. This picture shows how the chicken looked before I turned it. Note that it doesn't have the rich color you'd expect to see with barbecued chicken, mainly due to the lack of a traditional barbecue rub.

I quickly removed the lid, basted the top side with Martinelli's Premium Apple Juice applied with a spray bottle, turned the chicken over and end-for-end, basted the other side, and replaced the lid.

I checked the water pan and it was still quite full, so I didn't add water.

As I mentioned at the top of this page, I have to admit that by this point in the cooking process, I was beginning to wonder just how bad this chicken would turn out to be. The smell of the kiawe was not very pleasant, and I couldn't imagine how that would translate into something that tasted good. Despite my doubts, I pressed ahead into the final two hours of cooking.

I should have turned and basted the chicken again at 5:00pm, but I forgot. No big deal!

Crisping The Skin

At 5:35pm I checked the chicken and decided it was cooked well enough, but the skin was still pale and unattractive. So, I tried something I had always wanted to do. I carefully lifted off the middle cooking section and lid, set them aside, and placed the cooking grate right on top of the charcoal ring! I flipped the chicken skin side down and put the lid on the charcoal bowl.

The thermometer jumped up quickly to around 360°F. After about 10 minutes, I got distracted and didn't notice the thick smoke billowing from the cooker, something my significant other brought to my attention with some urgency! I got the chicken off the cooker before any serious damage was done. You can see just a little charring on the right thigh in Picture 2.

Kiawe Chicken - `Ono! (Delicious!)

The chicken came off the cooker at 5:45pm and cooled for five minutes. Instead of that unpleasant aroma I had noticed earlier, I now smelled wonderful chicken! It was a different smell from what I would expect with oak or pecan, but still a very appetizing smell. I figured that was the result of crisping the skin, plus the fact that the smell of kiawe and mesquite is something I normally associate with grilled foods. 

The chicken skin was crispy and delicious! The meat had flavor throughout and was very moist, even in the breast meat. It was not overly salty, and despite having soaked with an entire head of garlic, there was no strong garlic flavor or odor that I could discern. My cooking log notes that the chicken pretty much fell off the drumstick and wing bones, and the words "finger lickin' good" were uttered more than once!

Now you may ask, "How did 'Rocky Junior', the range-fed chicken, figure into the results?" Well, honestly I don't know, since I didn't prepare a normal chicken using the same method for a side-by-side comparison. All I can say is that it looked, smelled, and tasted great, and was very moist and tender. How much of that should be attributed to the recipe and brining versus the chicken itself is impossible to say. 

So, this was definitely a chicken recipe that I can recommend whole-heartedly. If you travel to Hawaii yourself or have a friend who lives there or visits often, try to get a few pieces of kiawe and some real Hawaiian sea salt for that authentic island flavor. I hope you'll give it a try soon! Pômaika`i! (Good luck!)