Holy wowzers, folks, I finally got a chance to do a second whole chicken on the pellet grill, and followed some of your suggestions-- drying it out in the fridge for awhile, and upping the heat to 425 (no mayo, sorry Scally... James was watching, and he has a weird relationship with mayo.)
Dried the bird off really good with paper towels and let it sit in the fridge for about an hour (resting on some more dry paper towels), then put a light coating of olive oil and sprinkled rub all over, and popped it back in the fridge for another half hour or so. Threw it on the grill at 425, and before we knew it, 165 IT, and it was dinner time!
We cooked up a little asparagus in butter, then added a few glugs of balsamic vinegar and let that reduce down till the asparagus was just tender. (I can't remember which of you fine folks suggested that for veggies, but that was a HIT with James, thank you!)
We tucked in, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven! I accidentally got the skin just a teensy bit too dark in a couple places (I couldn't locate my vertical roaster, and didn't turn the bird at all, which probably would have helped), but OH MY LORD was that skin phenomenal!!! Heck, the whole bird was just beyond delicious!
I typically don't care at all for breast meat because it's just too dry, but that crunchy crispy skin must have held in some extra magic, because daaaayyymn that was juicy breast meat.
Not the prettiest of pictures, but I had a hard enough time holding James (and myself) off long enough to snap a quick pic!
THANK YOU EVERYONE for your advice and tips-- that was by far the best chicken I have ever made! Which is really, really timely, because I have 50 one-day-old meat chickens arriving on Saturday, and James had begun to second guess his usually unwavering faith in my sanity!! This one was just a plain old store bought in the bag type, so we cannot WAIT to try with one of our home grown ones.
Ya'll have elevated mere chicken to a new status at my house!
