Simple Smoked Chicken Breast, everything you need to know about making moist smoked chicken.

Smoked chicken breasts sitting on a foil lined plate

This post is a straightforward, no fuss recipe, for smoking bone-in chicken breast.

Ingredients

You pretty much only need chicken, salt, pepper, and a grill.

Temperature

First, the smoking temperature is important here. You can smoke chicken low and slow, but I often find that the chicken can have a burned/bitter smoke flavor that isn’t really appealing.

To avoid this bitter smoke flavor, I recommend smoking your chicken at a higher temperature.

I smoke my chicken breasts at 300 degrees F. This is also a temperature that’s pretty easy for me to maintain that desired thin blue smoke on my offset smoker.

Chicken

For your chicken, you’ll want to use bone-in in breasts with the skin.

At these higher temperatures, the skin gets a little blistery and is a great treat right off the grill.

Instructions and Tips

Preheat your smoker or grill to approximately 300 to 350 degrees F.

Cover your chicken in a little bit of olive oil and give a liberal sprinkling with salt and pepper. Then, just toss them on the smoker.

You’ll want to smoke your chickens until you reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees F.

This will depend on the size of your breast and the temperature of your smoker. I recommend checking on your breasts every 20 to 30 minutes until they’re pretty close to around 150 degrees F.

Then check them until a little more frequently. I highly recommend a meat thermometer for any home kitchen if you don’t have one, you really need to get one.

A meat thermometer can really make the difference in all of your meat dishes. Especially poultry.

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There are only a few degrees between fully cooked and fully destroyed when it comes to a turkey or chicken breasts.

For this post, I used an offset smoker.

I don’t have a smoker

You don’t need a dedicated smoker.

Your standard Weber/Kettle grill will do just fine.

Just put your coals on one side of the grill and place your chicken on the other side.

Point the thick side of your breasts toward the hotter side of the grill since that part can take a little more heat than the thinner tips.

If you’re using briquettes in your grill, I recommend getting some hunks of wood to add to the grill just for a little more flavor.

You can buy them in an assortment pack and try the different flavors to see which one you like the best.

If you’re afraid of throwing the wood chips directly onto the coals, you can use a smoker box, but I usually just toss it right into the grill.

I really recommend using lump charcoal.

Feel free to use whatever rubs you like. In Fact, we think our rub recipe is pretty great.

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