This area, this year, this month is having a real cold snap. We Californians living in the Bay Area here aren’t used to freezing temperatures. Albeit, this is at night. Even so, our daytime temperatures aren’t getting much past 50. That ain’t right. How do we cope?
Smoke meat.

I found myself mid-day on Sunday preparing a chicken for smoking. Our guests were due to arrive about 3pm. I was flipping through my mind, how should I marinate/season/rub the chicky chick chick? I had a load of Meyer Lemons that Lisa was kind enough to gift the MeatHenge staff. Hey, they’re orange-like. Maybe I could try Andreas Viestad’s Orange Chicken? Maybe, maybe not.
I got close. At that point in the day I had a lot of things happening. 3 of which were little boys at full hype out. Anyhoo, I figured I could do the recipe from memory. Maybe, maybe not.
Here’s what the recipe called for:
One 3 pound (1,3 kg) free range chicken
2-3 oranges
1 pinch saffron powder
Salt
4 tablespoon melted butter
1/4 cup (1/2 dl) orange juice
2 fennel bulbs, in quarters
And what I didn’t remember to add was the butter. I remembered most everything else, even injecting it into all the parts of the chicky, even the back (thinking it might distribute some love). I didn’t do the fennel bulbs, I didn’t feel the need.

Looks pretty darned good huh? Smoked using real hickory. Yum. It was juicy and lovely and tasted okay. But the richness of the butter was missing. Cause I didn’t add it. Damned me. It’s funny too, cause when I was chowing down on the breast portion I was thinking, “dang, this really needed some fat injected in to it.” There you go.

All in all it was a really nice pile of smoked goodness. I did some spicy country style pork ribs along with the chicken. The pork was rich, yummy, spicy & had some strong herbage flavors hanging about.
This is definitely worth another try.
Xo Xo