Cooking with one hand tied behind your back.

[mike.stavlund]

My neighbor is on a really restrictive diet-- proteins are limited to chicken or lamb with salt and pepper for seasoning-- which I of course took as a personal challenge.  I figure she must be really sick of the same flavors, so I immediately thought of using some smoke.  Too, I checked to see if I could cook with a bit of apple (to go with the apple smoke), and got a greenlight for that.  Chicken with apple, then.  It's on. 

I was planning on being generous with the salt and pepper, and thought I'd slice up some apples to put inside the body cavity.  But then at the last minute I was thinking about how I'll sometimes make a compound butter (butter mixed with herbs) and stuff it under the skin for extra flavor.  Can't use butter, though, but it got me thinking about putting some apple under there.  So I sliced some disks of apple, seasoned them with S&P, and slid them under the skin.  It looks a little funny, but I hoped it would add some moisture and flavor to the white meat. 

It worked pretty well.  I squeezed both birds on the (E-Code) 14.5 WSM and set up some lump with some apple wood pieces (I'm the guy who spends the whole fall family apple-picking adventure searching for branch trimmings...).  It ran for 3 hours between 250 and 280, putting some nice color on the chickens.  The white meat did seem a little more moist than usual, but even better was that nice piece of savory apple.  A good day, and a fun challenge.

[Craig]

Looks good to me!

[jcnaz]

Worth a try!

[SixZeroFour]

Nice job Mike - those birds look great!

[WNC]

Chicken looks great, and way to look after a neighbor! That's what it's all about

[MrHoss]

Beauty idea of putting the apple slices under the skin. I have put halved lemons under the skin over the breasts before to mixed results....the apple may work better I am thinking now. Bravo for going out of your way to accommodate a friend, I like your style. Meeting a challenge with ingenuity is the way to go.

[1buckie]

Good Deal....nice to take care & help out......

That way the person gets something they would ordinarily not come across....a different tasting meal !!!

does she like lemons?