Whole Chickens with Auber

[CUTiger80]

Quick question for you guys that have installed the Auber and bypassed the stock controller.  I am going to do a few whole chickens and wondered about smoking them at 250 until the IT of the breast is around 155 or so then let the Auber crank the temp up to 325 until the IT is 165 in an attempt to crisp up the skin.
Thoughts?

 

[Walt]

I think you would have to remove your bird until the box temp reached 325 then replace to finish. The temp rises too slow to achieve the desired temp before the bird is overcooked.  At this point, you may as well finish in a preheated oven or grill but theoretically can be done that way. Installing a higher wattage element (allowing a faster rise in box temp) & re-autotuneing could potentially make it possible.

 

[paidin]

There are no connective tissues in chicken that require low and slow.  if you are able to, cook the entire chicken at 325 degrees, just like your indoor oven except enjoy the smoky goodness in addition to the crispy crust.

I do not see how you guys are believing that your SI do not heat up fast enough.  your food and the cold cabinet acts like a heat sink but it heats up fast enough based on the BTUs of your heating element.  It does not make sense that setting it at 250 is fine for chicken but setting it at 325 will cause your chicken to dry out before it finishes cooking?  doesn't make sense to me.

paidin

 

[Walt]

You misunderstand. Set your box to 325 & let it rip. The chicken will be done prior to achieving 325. The skin will be edible but not crisp. At least that is the result in my#2.  The most imortant thing to me is the moisture & smoke.  I can still crisp the skin in the oven or grill but can not do so on a linear one step cook in the smoker.

However, my girls favorite prep for chicken is an hour in the smoker @ 225 followed by a low & slow braise covered in onions, garlic and carrots in a dutch oven for another 4 or 5 hours. It is then removed & pulled and replaced in the braising liquid. Great on tacos or a pot pie or shepards pie or mix with cream cheese & stuff a pabano pepper & resmoke.

 

[paidin]

I stand corrected then.  If that is the case, how about placing some fire bricks in there and preheating it to 325 first, then putting the chicken in?  The thermal mass should help the SI reach crispy skin status?

 

[CUTiger80]

Thanks for the comments.
I guess my thought in cooking at 250 is to extend the smoke time.  At 325, I'm concerned that I will get real intense smoke for a short period of time.
I'll probably just try & get the rub under the skin and then toss the skin when the bird is done.

 

[paidin]

the good thing about chickens is that they are cheap!  experiment and let us know whats best.  I would but its wet, windy, and snowy out still

paidin

 

[CUTiger80]

I've included 2 things in this post.  The first is the results of my chicken smoke yesterday and the second is an Auber question.  Tony, if you would rather me re-phrase the Auber item and move it to another category, just let me know and I will be glad to do that.
I decided to smoke the chickens as I have done before, use the skin as a moisture barrier only and then toss it when the smoke is completed.
First I brined the birds for about 5 hours in Tony's poultry brine.  I rinsed & dried the birds then lifted up the skin, applied some olive oil & rub to the meat, put some more rub on the outside, stuffed the birds with mire poix and smoked at 250 deg.  These were 6 lb. birds so they were going to be tight putting them side-by-side on the same rack, so I split them up.  Top rack in second slots and bottom rack in fourth slots.
I put the Auber probe in the bottom bird breast and set the Auber to cook at 250 deg until the IT = 165 deg. I put the Maverick meat probe in the upper bird and the Maverick smoker probe on the lower rack.  (I thought that the upper bird would cook faster since the temp would be higher closer to the top, and I didn't want the Auber turning the smoker off before both birds were done.  I also wanted to check the temp difference between the top of the smoker where my permanent Auber probe is located and the lower rack.)
Below are some photos showing the birds before going in the smoker, in the smoker, and finished product.
The birds came out great, were very moist, and tasted good, but here is what really happened.
I found that the smoker temp at the lower rack ran about 20 deg higher than the top of the smoker.  (I assume this was because it was a lot closer to the heating element.)  This was evan after the smoker got up to 250 deg (at the top) and stabilized.  The bottom bird (with the Auber probe) therefore was cooking faster.  When the bottom bird got to 160 IT, the top bird was still at 150 or so.  The Auber was going to turn the smoker off (based on the IT of the bottom bird) and the top bird would not be done.
I made a decision to turn the Auber off and re-program it so that it controlled the smoker based on time and not temp.  Once I did this and then turned everything back on, the Auber steadily dropped the smoker temp from 250 all the way down to about 218 before it started to recover and then ramp back up to 250 again.  I thought that this was strange since I had re-programmed the Auber to cook at 250 for several hours.
When the bottom bird got to 165, I opened the door and checked with my instant-read thermometer and found that there were a couple of areas of the breast that were still below 165 (around 162) and decided to let it go longer.  Of course the smoker temp dropped again (because the door was opened) and then ramped back up.
During this whole process, the top bird caught up with the bottom bird and they were both done at about the same time.
I'm wondering if anyone can explain the weird phenomenon with the Auber dropping down to 218 before kicking back up to 250, and is there something else that I should have done?  (My only explanation is that when I turned the Auber back on, the smoker was at about 245, which is way different than what it saw when I first initialized it, so it was confused.)
Also, I was surprised at the consistent temp difference between the 2 racks.  I have checked this before with ribs on the top two slots and found the temp to be relatively consistent between the two.
Should I have forced the two birds on the same rack and eliminated this problem?
Any other ideas or thoughts?

 

[BedouinBob]

Hey Ravel, it may be just me but I would put the probe into the bird from the front as you look at it in your picture. I find that it gives me a better reading of the breast temp which is what is typically used to test if it is done. On the temp swing, I am pretty sure that the Auber programs itself during autotune and I wonder if it doesn't have an equation that brings the temp up slowly so it doesn't overshoot.

 

[Barrel99]

I have done considerable testing of temps between shelves, and it always shows that the temp gets higher the closer it gets to the firebox. Sometimes switching shelves during the smoke is helpful. But what I also found out is that the temp is dependent upon the type of meat, the temp of the meat when put in the box, the amount of meat and the placement of the meat on the shelf. I also surmised by watching this forum that each SI model cooks a bit differently and that using recommendations from someone with a different model, might require a little change when you cook in your model.

I don't have an Auber so can't help there except that maybe when you turned the Auber off then back on, the Auber goes thru some kind of startup cycle.

 

[NDKoze]

I don't have an Auber, so cannot help you with that part of your question.

There is a distinction between heat and stability. The heat will definitely be higher on the lower rack and the stability will be worse. Conversely, the heat will be lower on the top racks, but the heat fluctuations will be more stabile/level.

If at all possible, I try to cook all of my meat on the same rack unless one is bigger than the other. In the case where one of the cuts is bigger than the other, I put the bigger cut on the lower shelf. If the cuts are the same size, I have on occasion swapped the shelves.

This is another good reason to get as big of a smoker that you can afford.

 

[CUTiger80]

Gregg,
I would agree with you in the stock smoker set-up, but with the Auber (the way that it pulses the power to the element) that does not happen as much.
In my case, in the top of the smoker (where the Auber permanent probe is mounted) the temp stayed almost dead on 250 deg for the entire smoke.  The Maverick probe on the lower shelf stayed pretty consistent at 268-272 deg, which is a little drift, but not much.  Now my Maverick probe was about 2" from one side (since the chicken was in the middle) and I attached it to the rack with a small binder clip.  Not sure if that could have affected it at all.  I have seen where some guys poke the temperature probe through a small potato and let the sensing end stick out several inches so that the probe is not right down on the rack, but I haven't tried that yet (mainly because all of my potatoes are the manly meal-in-a-skin type).

 

[SuperDave]

When you turned off the Auber to reprogram it, did you unplug everything?  I usually reprogram in the active mode it is in without turning anything off. 

 

[NDKoze]

Gregg,
I would agree with you in the stock smoker set-up, but with the Auber (the way that it pulses the power to the element) that does not happen as much.
In my case, in the top of the smoker (where the Auber permanent probe is mounted) the temp stayed almost dead on 250 deg for the entire smoke.  The Maverick probe on the lower shelf stayed pretty consistent at 268-272 deg, which is a little drift, but not much.  Now my Maverick probe was about 2" from one side (since the chicken was in the middle) and I attached it to the rack with a small binder clip.  Not sure if that could have affected it at all.  I have seen where some guys poke the temperature probe through a small potato and let the sensing end stick out several inches so that the probe is not right down on the rack, but I haven't tried that yet (mainly because all of my potatoes are the manly meal-in-a-skin type).

Yeah, you are right about the stability issue. With the Auber, you shouldn't really see "swings". But, I am guessing that you will still see noticeable differences in temps from the top rack verses the lower. The mass of the meat in the smoker can also affect the temperatures as large cold masses of meat will server as a heat sink and cause a bigger discrepancy from the upper to lower rack verses a smoker with a smaller mass of meat such as a rib smoke.

I have seen some people cut a hole in a wood block and hang from the rack with a screw in hook. I have also seen people stick the probe through a bunched up piece of foil that they can squeeze in between one rows of the rack.

 

[CUTiger80]

Dave,
Yes I did.  I first turned if off and then back on and re-programmed it.  When I saw what it was doing, I then turned it off, unplugged it, plugged it back in, turned it back on and it did the same thing.  I was wondering if I shouldn't have just gone into the existing program, while it was running, and changed the current "E" value from "F" to "t".  I did think about this but I wasn't sure what it would do since it was already in this step of the program.  My other thought was that I should have added another step to the program and set it to C=250, E=t, t=1.0 (or something like that).  That way, after the first bird reached 165 IT, the smoker would stay at 250 deg while the other bird continued to cook.

 

[DivotMaker]

Ravel,

Good to see the birds came out well!  I'm following your thought process, and I think Gregg is right on.  First, the air, at the top of the smoker, is more stable.  Secondly, the bottom shelf is closer to the heat source (radiant heat).  However, that large hunk of meat, below the top hunk of meat, not only acts as a heat sink, it acts as a shield!  Hot air rises straight up, and the meat above rests in a "dead air" space.  Yes, the air flows around the bottom meat, but not directly.  I'm not a physicist, but my experience has always shown that the top meat is done in more time than the bottom meat.

Don't stress about it, or over-think it.  Just remember that the lower shelf gets done first.

As for your Auber dropping to 218:  Sounds to me like it was trying to recover from all the door opening.  In the future, put the probe in the center of the breast meat, from the front, and just keep the door closed until it hits 165.