Thawed out a package of thighs for dinner, and decided to cook them on my Weber Performer. Not enough love shown to the old school duo recently, so the Performer got the bullpen call. (Heck, it's baseball season. Why not use a baseball analogy?
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Seasoned with some plain old Kroger brand chicken grilling seasoning. I bought a couple of bottles from the markdown basket. Not a bad combination of savory herbs, salt & garlic. For the record, I'm not a big fan of raw chicken pictures, but I took one anyway. Still working on my photography skills.
I trimmed off some extra fat, as thighs are fatty enough and will cause flare ups if you don't watch them carefully.
Built a two-zone fire, one side with about 2/3 chimney of KBlue, and the other with no coals. I added a chunk of maple wood for a little smoke flavor. We had two big maple trees taken down last fall and they split some of the larger pieces to a point, so I split off some pieces and cut them into chunks for smoking. Free seasoned hardwood is great for grilling & smoking, and I now have a good supply of maple wood for chicken and pork. Grilled them in two batches, starting skin side down to get a good sear. Kept the lid on to avoid the dreaded flare ups, and as they started to look good & brown, I moved them to the indirect side of the grill.
Here they are cooking more slowly and not blazing into chicken flavored hockey pucks. Indirect cooking is your friend for many things on the grill, especially meats that render out lots of fat as they cook. I put a pan underneath these thighs to catch drips, and sometimes I wrap half of the charcoal grate with HD foil to keep the grill from getting greasy. This can also cause unwanted fires & flare ups, and I don't like my grill to get too gunky.
When they reached 175° or so, I sauced some of the thighs with SBR mixed with Blues Hog original. I just mix the two sauces above with good results. The fam likes it and that's what matters.
I planned to pull some of this chicken and either make chicken nachos or a grilled chicken salad, but the fam had other plans. They were all eaten for dinner. Maybe I should have sauced less, and left more savory, but that's not a problem. I pulled the sauced thighs for sandwiches.
Plated with au gratin potatoes and spiced peaches that I forgot we had. Our neighbor has a nice garden and she loves my BBQ cooking, so I swap BBQ & grilled goodies for canned goods in the fall and that works out great for both of us. Another of my monochromatic dinners, as we didn't have any green beans or another contrasting vegetable, but this still looks pretty good to me!
Y'all get out there and cook something!
