The SECRET To Juicy Pulled BBQ Chicken | Big Green Egg

The KEY to juicy pulled chicken blends competition bbq tricks & backyard bbq chicken techniques together on the big green egg resulting in some of the juiciest, smoked, pulled chicken thighs you’ve ever tasted!

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Chapters
00:00 – Competition(ish) chicken thighs
02:20 – Tex Mex Rub Recipe
04:42 – Step 1
05:47 – Big Green Egg Setup
10:10 – Step 2
13:26 – Step 3
15:17 – Step 4 (Glaze Sauce)
19:30 – Results & Taste Test

#chickenrecipe #biggreenegg #bbqchicken
@BigGreenEggHQ

[Music] Crockpots. Trust me, this is not the secret to juicy pulled chicken. Let’s get into it. [Music] The method that I’ve developed and I’m going to share with you today, I’m going to call competitionish barbecued chicken thighs. If we were doing competition uh barbecue, we would have a couple things. We would have a bone in skin on chicken thigh. Today, we are not doing that as these are boneless, skinless chicken thighs. So, while these aren’t going to get you a call back at any barbecue competition, they are going to put you at the top of your friends and family’s wish list when it comes to grilling up some amazing juicy pulled chicken. So, while you can tell I have a lot that I’m going to be cooking today in preparation for uh Anie’s wedding that I am uh doing the catering for, you don’t need anything more than a single pack to follow along with today’s uh recipe. Even though today I’ll be showing a lot more as I am prepping for about 150 people. So, I’ve got about 2530 lbs of chicken, pork, as well as steaks that I’m doing for that. But, I thought this is a great time to share the adaptation of competition meets backyard barbecue and how to turn out an incredible chicken thigh. So, how am I going to bring uh these two worlds together? If you were just doing simple grilled chicken thighs for a weekn night family dinner, you’d be tempted just to fire up your grill, maybe even on direct heat, throw those chicken thighs on and get an incredible result. But if you want to do something like chicken tacos or chicken sandwiches where you’re getting a pulled chicken, this often can lead to uh the risk of drying things out. This is where the competition barbecue world solves a couple problems, but I’m going to delete all the complexity that you can find in a competition barbecue uh recipe. We’re not injecting our thighs with a special marinade. We’re not removing the skin, scraping off the fat, and going absolutely crazy with our presentation. But I am going to uh follow along with a couple of the steps on these boneless skinless thighs, which includes starting with a smoke bath, then moving into a brazing period, and last but not least, a special marinade uh sauce that turns out an incredible sort of Mexican flavored TMEX pulled chicken taco. I’m going to chop them, but you can shred them. They’re more than tender enough to do anything. And it all gets started with a specialty uh dry rub that I’ve created. So, this is now on the website. I’m going to show you how to make my uh Texmex inspired dry rub and we’ll get ready to get them on our thighs. Okay, let’s get ready to make our Texmex rub. The flavor profile that I’m going for is something very similar to Holy Voodoo by Meat Church. This isn’t a Holy Voodoo uh bottle. And there’s a couple ingredients that I don’t have that Holy Voodoo would have, including things like MSG, terminado sugar, as well as dehydrated jalapeno uh powder. But this is going to give us a lot of the same great taste. a little bit less sugar and it’s using less expensive ingredients that you can find around your house. So, let’s get ready to uh make it up. I’m going to make a recipe that will come close to filling a larger bottle, but you can cut this in half for something like a smaller shaker. Let’s get started with 1 cup of diamond crystal kosher salt. [Music] Next, we need 10 tablespoons of smoked paprika. [Music] 6 tablebspoon of granulated garlic powder, 6 tablebspoon of brown sugar. Next, we need 3 tablebspoon of fresh cracked black pepper. And using my pepper cannon’s measurement, a full one of these caps is 2 tbsps. So, I’ll take you fast forward while I crack up some fresh pepper. half cap more. Add our pepper. Next up will be some oregano, followed by onion powder. We’re going to start with 2 tablespoon of dried oregano, 1 tbsp of onion powder, and again, this is granulated, not the really, really, really fine powder. Down into the teaspoon range. We’re almost there, team. So, we’ll start with two teaspoons of chili powder, two more teaspoons of cayenne pepper, cumin, and last but not least, celery seed. Bring you close, show you our layers. We’ll give this a shake to make sure everything’s fully incorporated. That looks good. This dry rub recipe along with all my other dry rub recipes and written recipes live on the uh Smoking Dad Bbecue website. Uh link is down in the description for after today’s video. Now this is ready. Let’s get it on. Okay, we’ve got all our chicken thighs laid out. And now you get a sense why I like to make my own rubs versus going for the storebought stuff is this is going to use a lot which is uh why I came up with this a meat church holy voodoo inspired rub. Obviously we don’t have things like dried jalapeno uh andor some specialized uh sugar in that but this gives a very similar flavor profile if you’re wondering what it tastes like. So, I’ll take you fast forward while I get some seasoning on the bottom of our chicken thighs. [Music] Perfect. Now, we’ll flip and repeat on the presentation side and then we’ll get to work on firing up our grills while this tacks up. Take you back to fast forward. Perfect. Now, we’ll do a light dusting on top. We’re going to do a little bit of correction once they’re in the pans. So, you don’t need to get a perfect coating now, but just a little bit for that salt to start to tack up. do some of its work while our grill is coming up to temperature. Okay, these look good. So, they’re going to tack up while we go fire up our grills. We’re going to be cooking indirect today. So, let’s get our Big Green Egg ready for today’s cook. Remove the expander. Shake out my kickash basket. A little bit of charcoal left for today. And whether you’re following along on Primo, Komado Joe, or Big Green Egg, this is the kick ash can. Love this accessory is one touch. I’ve got all my ash ready to throw out. Drop that back in. Charcoal basket. And I’ve got one piece of smoking wood. Now, a note on smoking wood. Poultry is very sensitive to smoke. It’s not like brisket or pork where we could throw a lot more wood. And this is naturally seasoned versus kilried. Kil dried the too long didn’t read version here. I’ve got an ebook available for Komado Joe Big Green Egg and Primo that goes into all the details and the moisture levels uh for this and why that matters. But the uh quick version here is this is higher density and moisture content which is what’s going to give us amazing flavor. Often the big box store smoking woods are kil dried and they just don’t pack the same flavor. So one is going to be good for me. Going to cover that up with some leftover charcoal and add some fresh fog. [Music] Got a little bit more than I need. So, I’ll remove some of the massive pieces. And the reason why I’m removing some of the extra charcoal is a not only do we need it, but since I have that piece of wood under there, I want to make sure that the fire burns down and uh actually smolders that wood and that smoke comes back up through the charcoal, which is almost literally an active charcoal filter, which is going to give us a nice clean smoke. if I had way too much charcoal uh and it may there’s a chance that it may not actually smolder that piece of wood and or get the purification of coming up through the hotter burning uh coal. So, the right size uh fire for today is essential. So, I’m going to remove just what I need for a couple hours of indirect cooking. [Music] So, that looks about perfect to me. Let’s grab our Growlazer grill gun. Fire it up. Waiting till I see nice white ashed over coals again directly over that piece of smoking wood. Let’s close our dome. And we’ve got our top vent all the way open for the heat up phase. So, I’m going to be aiming to cook today around 250°. So, I’m not really concerned uh overshooting the temperature cuz right now I’m just getting some heat in the dome where it’s starting to be about 5 seconds or so as long as I want to have my hand there. And we are nearly there. So, I’m going to drop in the expander along with our deflector stones, but leave them in a halfopen pizza pie configuration just to get a bit more heat in the dome. Like so. and hoping you can see that uh pizza configuration allowing some heat to more easily escape and come up and continue to heat our dome. So, we’ll just leave everything open for a few more minutes. [Music] Okay, the temperature has started to recover up to just above the 250° that I want. And now we definitely have the heat in the dome. If I were to take a temperature, we’re just shy of 150°. And that on the ceramics is again about 5 seconds. That’s about as much as I want. So, getting some high heat gloves. I’m going to close those plates up. You wouldn’t need the uh expander rack if you’re not doing as much as I plan to cook today, but I think I’m going to need the capacity, which is why I have that in there. Close it up. So, now we’ll close down our bottom draft door just to limit the speed of the fire and temperatures coming up so we don’t overshoot. So about one finger’s width on the bottom. And while the grill is still recovering, I’m going to wait till it crosses 200 before adjusting my regulator cap. Then I’ll close it about halfway. And then as it works its way towards 250, I’ll place it to about its final vent settings. Uh again, which I have a complete guide to show you all common temperatures, but that’s about a finger’s width for 250°. So I’ll leave that open while it recovers back to 250. Let’s go get our chicken ready. Okay, so we’ve got our grills lit, set up for indirect. Both of the deflectors are now closed and just coming to their final resting positions of 250°. So, we can get to work on transferring our chicken into a pans. This is uh where some of the secret lies for both our smoke and our brazing stage. And I mentioned we’ll add a little bit more rub at the end. So, I’ll show you everything involved with getting these perfect competitionish chicken thighs for some amazing juicy chicken. Come nice and close. Let’s get into it. Okay. So, I’ll demonstrate with uh two and then take you fast forward or save you the trouble of watching all the other ones. So, starting with a foil pan, what I’m going to do is add just a little bit of our rub for a light dusting on the bottom. Just a sprinkle like so. Then, uh using some low sodium or no sodium uh chicken broth, going to add less than a/4 of inch to each pan. Just enough to cover the bottom. 1/4 in should probably be too much. We were a 16th. Just a little brazing liquid in each one. Then grabbing our chicken thighs, we’re going to roll them up into little rolls. Pack them in tightly. Clean them up a little bit for presentation. Place into our pan. [Music] Okay, perfect. So, at this size, I’m fitting about 10 in each pan. Next, I’m using clarified butter. In uh many of the competition videos, they’re using sort of real slices of butter uh on top of the rub, but then that melts and sometimes washes away the butter. So, what I like to do is uh get Costco sells clarified ghee. And I could just drizzle a little bit over. And this is also going to be a critical step later on when we make our final sauce that we are going to glaze these up with is we get the benefit of this butter in our final uh result. take you fast forward while I add a little bit of clarified butter on top of each of our chicken thighs. Now we can uh fix any top issues with our presentation side by adding just a little bit more rub on top. Once that clarified ghee has ran off, we’ll be left with nice uniform seasoning. All right, two down. I don’t know how many more to go. [Music] Okay, I was able to squeeze everything into six pans. the individual pack, interestingly, from Costco, much smaller uh size than the bulk packs. So, I keep an eye on those to make sure everything cooks evenly. But otherwise, I was able to squeeze everything into uh the three pans for each grill. Two on the bottom, one up top. We’re good to go. [Music] So, the game plan from here is I’m going to smoke our chicken thighs low and slow at 250° Fahrenheit for 45 minutes. Now, a quick uh point of clarification on that. Uh when you throw everything uh or fill your grill up with a whole bunch of cold proteins, things cook slower, 30 to 40% slower. This is true. Everything from like the big green eggs I’m using behind me to my offsets or anything else uh in between is that that will go slower. So, if you’re doing just a single pan, your cook time here will be about 30 minutes. If you’re going for more of a max capacity, like I’m doing with three pans in each grill, that’s going to slow us down into about the 45minut range. But you could uh find out where you need to be if you’re using something like my Chef’s Temp X10. We’re looking for a lovely medium rare chicken. So, about 130° Fahrenheit is what I’m looking for when I do a spot check with my Chef’s Temp X10. And that lets me know we are ready to move to part two, which is now brazing. This is what is going to help really make the chicken fall apart tender. Amazing for sandwiches and tacos. The brazing step is something uh that all the competition teams are using even for things like bite through uh skin. This is a critical step, but without the skin, it’s going to be uh what is giving us an amazing juicy tender result. So, I’m going to wrap everything in foil. A quick uh pro tip here if you’re doing more chicken thighs like I’m doing today with three um pans is to close your bottom bent of your komado. And this will stop your temperatures from skyrocketing when you spend a couple minutes, even a few minutes just servicing uh those pans and adding foil is enough for the charcoal to combust and send your temperatures uh into the uh skyrocketing territory. So just before you open the grill, close the bottom vent, do your work, uh service your pans, add the foil, close it back up, and when you see the temperature recover uh back to the 250° uh that you set it to, you can restore the bottom vent down to uh or back to one finger’s width, I should say. I’ve just set a timer for another uh 45 minutes. Uh again, if you’re doing one pan, it would be 30 minutes. If you’re doing multiple pans, uh 45 minutes where we’re going to be brazing. And once again, I’ll be checking with my Chef Temp X10 till we reach a internal temperature of about 150° Fhe. And we’ll be ready to uh move to our last stage, which is our sauce. Speaking of which, I’m going to get the ingredients out, bring it nice and close, and show you how we’re going to prep that. So, uh it’ll be all ready to go by the time our chicken thighs reach 150° F. Okay, for our glaze, or I should say half glaze, half sauce. If we were going for a glaze, it would be a little bit more of a syrup where you put your spoon in and it just barely coats the back. This is going to be half sauce, half glaze. Uh since again, this isn’t going for something in front of the judges. This is going to be in part what gives our shredded chicken, pulled chicken, lots of flavor. So, I’m going to add for each pan that you make. So, one pack of chicken would be one pan. That would be one adobo pepper. Since I have uh six uh pans going, I’m going to add the full pack of six adobo peppers into my pot here. You notice I’m using an induction uh top. Normally, if you had a small cook pan, you could just add this to your grill uh and heat the sauce up that way when it’s all done. But since I’m out of real estate going for max capacity, I’m just going to use the induction top just so I don’t have a very cold sauce when we go to add our chicken. We have almost all of our ingredients save for the last ingredient, which is actually going to come from the chicken stock and uh the clarified butter as well as all those seasonings and juices from the chicken themselves. Uh we’ll add that as a last step. So for each pan, you’re going to add one cup of ketchup. I have six pans, so I’ll add six cups. Next, we’re going to add for each pan one lime. So, the juice of a lime for each pan. So, I’ve got six limes. Just get those prepared. Okay, we’ve got the starting of our chili lime glaze. I’m going to um blend it up once we have the remaining ingredients from our foil pans. But now, I could start to get a little bit of heat. I didn’t want to turn the heat on with just the ketchup and the sugars as that will burn. But the lime will cut this enough that we can turn this on low heat and start getting a little bit of warmth into it. When we add everything else, it’ll be ready to hit the blender so we have a nice smooth consistent chili lime sauce. Okay, perfect. Couple of our pans, the thighs are probing 150° F. So, I’ve pulled off three and the other three are just a few degrees behind. That’s okay. That’s going to allow me to finish our sauce. I don’t need the ou from all six pans in order to finish our sauce. It would be way too thin if we were to do that. So, next step, we’re going to transfer to our blender and thin it out with a couple pans of our sauce. [Music] Try to hold our thighs so they don’t go everywhere. But just get the broth, the rub along with the chicken juices. Looking for about 10% of the ratio here. I think that’ll be good. Let’s check it out for consistency. [Music] Oh, that’s looking real good. I’m going to add just a little bit more from our second pan just to get a little bit thinner. [Music] Oh, that is looking good. So, I’m going to add that back into our pan. I’ll meet you over by the grill so we can start dunking our thighs. All right. Now, we can sauce our thighs. just remove our top grid. I’ll put that back once I have some space, but just to give it some working room. So, this part’s easy. We’re just going to take our thigh, dunk it completely, strain off any extra, set it back on the grill. Take you fast forward while I do the rest. [Music] Okay, all of our thighs are now probing at least 160°. ° Fhe. So, it is time to get them off. And this is where you could shred or chop. Me, I’m going to go for the chop. So, let’s get them nice and close. We’ll chop some up. Dive in for a taste test. [Music] [Applause] Well, that is one pile of tasty, juicy looking chicken. Obviously, I don’t need all this for our taste test. I’ll bring you nice and close. I’ll get to work chopping, transferring it over to the pan. As I said, this is going to be uh for my niece’s wedding. So, a lot of this is going to be vacaled and stored away. But don’t worry, I’ll set some aside for our taste test so you can get a sense for what I’m seeing, smelling, and tasting in a second. So, let’s get to work chopping this up. [Music] [Music] Oh, that was a lot of chopping, but I saved myself a pitm snack. So, sorry Brooklyn. If there is one person looking for chicken at the wedding and we’re all out, you would blame me. So, I wanted a little bit of this for my taste test. Now, obviously, if you were doing this at home, these are ready to enjoy right away. But, this is only one of three meals that I am doing. So, these are going to be vacaled, frozen, and I’m going to reheat everything uh day of the wedding using suvid to repasteurize it, bring it back to a food safe temperature. So, uh a long time at 140°. Even chicken is safe over I think it’s about 25 minutes or something like that at 140°. So, these are fully cooked. We’re going to reheat them to a safe temperature, hold them again for the minimum pasteurization time before we get ready to serve. But, those are already off into the freezer, saved for one uh Scooby snack here that I left for myself. So, let’s dive in. See how we did. Cheers. I’m falling apart. That’s worth all that chopping. The tenderness and juiciness on this is insane. Wow. Whether you’re putting this on tacos, sandwiches, or just a side on a salad or anything else, that is some remarkable chicken thighs blending the best of both worlds. the backyard and competition barbecue. I hope you enjoyed hanging out for this unique cook. I’ve got three more. We’re doing a carneasada as well as a pork carnitas to complete uh Brooklyn’s taco bar. If you’d like to hang out and see those cooks, be sure to subscribe and turn on the notification bell so you’re alerted uh when those videos cook cuz we’re going to do something I think pretty cool, especially with the carne asada that is great for group servings. That’s it for today. I’m James from Soad BBQ signing off. Remember, don’t be afraid to fire it up. Heat. Heat. [Music]