Brazilian bbq chicken

Admittedly, I borrowed some (or most) of my ideas/ramblings from Alton Brown and Emeril and even Rachel Ray, but putting it all together is all me. :D

This recipe is called Amazon Brazilian chicken. I had it in Manaus, Brazil back in 1999. The flavor was so good and complex, I figured the chef had added some exotic spices, so I went and asked him what his secret was. He was a little old man about 65 years old, 5 foot nothing, so I towered over him. He smiled wider than the mouth of the amazon when I started talking to him in his native tongue.

I said "This chicken is delicious. What spices do you use?" He looked up a little sheepishly, laughed a little and said "Only salt." I couldn't believe it, so I asked him how he made it. The real trick was in how he made it, not what the spices were. He smoked it on an open smoke pit for like 3 or 4 hours. The fire was made out of some kind of mesquite or cedar type wood which penetrated the meat and gave it the complex flavor I was tasting. He used a salt similar to kosher. He generously salted the meat and then put it on the grill next to the coals, but not directly above them. When he put the lid on, it smoked the chicken at about 250 degrees. Oh, he also only used thighs and legs because they're more juicy. I haven't tried this with breast meat, but it might work. The reason you slow cook it is because it makes the fat and juice and connective tissue in the meat "gelatanize" inside the muscle, making it tender. When chicken is cooked too fast, it loses those yummy (at least to us carnivores) juices because you destroy the cell structure, and out comes the jucies. Slow cooking kind of tricks the cells and before they release the good stuff, they're all cooked.

Anyway, I now use mesquite chips in a smoker box on my gas grill. It's pretty close to the amazon version, but the ambiance isn't even close. :D

You soak the chips in hot hot water for about 30 minutes and then put them in the smoker or wrap them up in tin foil with a few holes poked in it. Put that directly on the fire and when it starts smoking lower the temp to as low as your grill can go, and put the chicken as far away from the fire as possible. This is called indirect cooking. Direct cooking is when the meat is directly licked by the flames. Indirect is where the flame heats the air and makes smoke from the mesquite and cooks the chicken with that heat. It's part of the cooking slow thing. I only light one side of the grill and put the chips on that part of the fire to make the temp go as low as possible. 225-250 degrees is about where we want it. 3.5 - 4 hours of cooking time is just right. I also have a basket in the lid of my grill that's supposed to be for holding hamburgers and hot dogs after they're done cooking to keep them warm. It's the perfect place to put the chicken. It's inside the smoke and heat, but far from the fire.

You may think the chicken looks dry and inedible when it's cooking, but the juices and fat are actually trapped inside now. I only use thighs for this recipe because they are the juiciest and fattest (like me). Put them on the grill skin side up. That way the fat from the skin bastes the chicken as it drips down. I usually put the skin side down for only 30 minutes of the entire cook time. You have to be careful with this though because if you cook it too hot, the bottom of the chicken will burn and it's tough to cut that part off. If you're in a hurry, it's best to cook chicken skin down, because if it burns, it's easy to peel off the burnt skin. I don't like to eat the skin usually anyway, so a little burned skin is ok. It should be ok underneath. You know it's done when it looks really dried out and is pink all around. The pink is from the smoke penetrating the meat. I sometimes put KC Masterpiece on the chicken about 30 minutes before it's done. That way the bbq sauce bakes onto the chicken and gives little burnt edges that are carmelized and delicious. Eleisha likes it just plain though, and I go back and forth between sauce and no sauce. Both are really tasty.

(edit: Last time I made this, I tried it with skin down to see if it would kind of catch all the juices and let the chicken kind of stew in them. It worked as well as cooking it skin side up, so don't fret which way the chicken is facing. The real trick is cooking it slow enough and far enough away from the flame that you don't burn it.)

Wow, those last few paragraphs are really disjointed, have no time flow, and I need to edit it to flow better, but you get the idea.

I love to grill zucchini to go with this recipe too. Get some pretty good sized zucchini. Cut it into long strips about 1/4 inch thick, or make medallions 1/4 inch thick, brush with olive oil and salt and pepper. Grill it over direct medium flame for about 3 minutes on each side. It's a perfect compliment to the above chicken. :)