Grill Roasted Whole Chicken

***Guest Post from Mr. Michael Gordon himself...a.k.a King of the Grill!***

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t hold a parsnip to Leah Biber’s excellence at plucking nature’s bounty from the earth, and slicing and dicing it into some of the freshest and most delicious cuisine this side of the Flatirons.  However, when the recipe calls for meat and fire, I like to think I can hold my own.  I may play the flute for a living, but the grill is my real instrument.  Over the years, Leah and I have teamed up to make some pretty epic meals for ourselves and our friends.  Last Thursday night was no exception.  Leah had a dynamite recipe for a peach chutney to go with roasted chicken.  Never being satisfied to simply put a perfectly innocent animal in the hot box and wait, I lit up the grill and went on a smoky quest to elevate the predictable oven stuffer!

Grilling chicken, in my opinion, is all about indirect heat.  Grilling a whole chicken is about REALLY indirect heat.  I’m sure some of you have sat a perfectly good bird on top of a perfectly bad can of beer, but there are other ways.  I really like to use my smoker to cook whole chickens.  I know what you’re thinking…”But sometimes I don’t want my chicken to taste like it ran out of a burning barn and straight onto my plate.”  I whole heartedly agree.  What I like to do is use my smoker kind of like an oven.  Instead of burning wood, or a combination of wood and charcoal as I would to smoke a chicken, I only use charcoal.  Now of course the charcoal still makes smoke, but only a little...especially once it’s burning nice and hot.  Be sure and use natural lump charcoal.  It looks like burnt bits of wood (because that’s all it is!), and the smoke it produces is gentle and fragrant.  Do not use briquettes.  They look like pavement, and will make the skin of your bird taste like the breakdown lane on I-70. 

Get your smoker cooking at about 300 degrees with a water pan underneath the grill to add a little moisture.  Season a whole bird with anything you like (no loss here only to use a little salt and pepper) and place it on the grill breast side up.  If possible, orient it so that the legs are facing the fire, and breast faces away.  White meat cooks faster and dries out more easily than dark meat, so you can actually take advantage of unevenness in your grill to get both parts cooked perfectly.  If you have it, put a probe thermometer in the breast making sure it doesn’t touch any bone.  Then shut the lid, and don’t open it until the internal temperature reads just over 160 degrees.  For a 4-5lb chicken this should take 2 to 2.5 hours.  The skin will get nice a crispy with a beautiful amber color.  The meat will be juicy and tender just as if you roasted it in the oven, but with a hint of savory smoky goodness.  The only thing that could possibly make it better would be some delicious peach chutney, but as always I leave those things to the professionals.