There’s no reason to be intimidated by the task of smoking a big ole whole chicken on a Weber Smokey Mountain smoker. The first time I spatchcocked a whole chicken it looked so sad I was embarrassed to even look at it. But I researched more, and found an excellent tutorial online at one of my favorite Weber smoker-related sites, the Virtual Weber Bullet. My next attempt came out absolutely fantastic. And all the times after that came out great too! It’s really quite simple, and you always end up with a perfectly evenly cooked, very tender and juicy bird, which is exactly why you go through the ‘trouble’ of spatchcocking.
All of that spatchcocking got me to thinking: what’s the difference between spatchcocking and butterflying? Well, the answer is that when spatchcocking you remove the backbone. Butterflying involves cutting something into two parts but keeping them connected, without removing anything. I feel smarter already! Well, either way, spatchcocking makes this easy smoked whole chicken on the Weber Smokey Mountain look even cooler!
