Dutch Oven Smokehouse Chicken
Smokehouse Chicken is slow cooked in a dutch oven in a tenderizing sauce that causes the meat to become fork tender beneath a skin that is crisped and browned in the final step of the cooking process.
Serve it with a heaping helping of Alabama White Barbecue Sauce and you might feel as if you’ve gone to Glory.
In order to make the smokehouse chicken like I grew up with, you’d need a pit building that has been smoking chicken since 1950’s and the pit masters who work on it all day to get it just right. But on the off chance that you, like me, don’t have your own barbecue smokehouse, this is how I do it and it comes in as a very close kissing cousin – awfully good in it’s own right.
Recipe Ingredients:
- Cider Vinegar (more about that under the next photo)
- Kosher salt (or regular)
- Smoked Paprika (or regular)
- Hot sauce (the red kind)
- Crushed Red Pepper
- Brown Sugar (light or dark)
- Smoked or Regular Black Pepper
Oh yeah, you’re gonna need some chicken. Bone in, skin on. No exceptions if you want this to be just right.
Seriously, if you don’t have the exact ingredients I am using (other than the type of chicken) but have one of the “or” options I listed, do not go make a special trip to get the one I use. What you have on hand will do just fine.
If you really want to give it a smokehouse taste, add in a little bit of liquid smoke. I don’t use that on here because I get too many emails when I use it that are actually worse than the emails I get when I use food coloring, and that is saying something, believe me.
How To Make Smokehouse Chicken
Pour your vinegar into a dutch oven or deep baking dish.
A 9×13 would work for this as long as you are careful not to spill the liquid when putting it in and out of the oven.
Why Add Vinegar?
This chicken doesn’t taste like vinegar. The vinegar is a base that tenderizes it and infuses it with all of the other flavors but once you add everything else to the vinegar in the next step it becomes just a base. However, your kitchen will smell like cider vinegar and it WILL clean your sinuses out when you open the lid so if you can’t deal with that then you should have someone make this chicken for you :). However, if you like my slow cooked pulled pork, you’ll love this chicken. I used that recipe as a starting point to come up with this one.
Now add in all of your other stuff, everything except the chicken.
Stir that up good until the sugar is dissolved. The vinegar helps this happen pretty fast.
Now put your chicken in, skin side down.
Put a lid on your dutch oven or cover your baking dish with foil.
Bake this at 300 for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and carefully remove lid (watch for the steam). Flip chicken over and put lid back on. Return to oven for another 45 minutes.
After that time, remove lid and keep pot in oven. Place oven on broil for 15-20 minutes to brown and crisp skin, watching carefully so chicken doesn’t burn.
This is what mine looked like after 20 minutes under the broiler. I removed some of the liquid to get more parts of the chicken browning (the parts under the liquid won’t brown).
And this is what you have on your plate.
Now go ahead…Dig in to this crispy moist meal of goodness.
Ingredients
- Bone in skin on chicken however much will fit in a single layer of a baking dish or Dutch oven
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon smoked black pepper can use regular
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar dark or light
- 1 tablespoon hot sauce the red kind in the glass bottle
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 +1/2 cups cider vinegar
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients except for chicken in enamel Dutch oven, or other baking dish. Stir well until sugar is dissolved.
- Place chicken in pot, skin side down. Cover and place in 300 degree oven for 45 minutes. Remove pot from oven and flip chicken. Cover again and return to oven for another 45 minutes.
- Remove lid and place oven on broil. Broil for 20 minutes, or until skin is nicely browned and somewhat crispy on top, watching carefully so that it does not burn (this may take significantly less time in your oven as they vary).
- Spoon additional pan juices over to serve.
Nutrition
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
~Albert Einstein
Holler at me in the comments. I love to hear from you 🙂
This is the first of your recipes that just didn’t meet our expectations.
I followed it exactly (used breasts, cut in half). The chicken just didn’t have any flavor, except a slight vinegar taste.
I wonder if I reduced the liquid and brushed it over the chicken? Or could you marinate it overnighor a few hours? Don’t know if the vinegar would turn it to mush?
Oh, well. I roasted corn on the cob in the oven with your recipe and it was WONDERFUL!
I mean reduce it AFTER the chicken is baked.
I’m sorry it didn’t turn out as you’d hoped. It’s really just supposed to be a juicy, smoked chicken flavor. I’m with you on the vinegar marinade, I’m afraid overnight might be too much but that’s not to say I won’t try it! At least the corn was a save! But now you’ve got me dying for some corn 😉
Tasty Tasty Thanks 🙂
Sorry, I guess we are the exception. Made this yesterday and neither my son nor I could get through one piece of chicken.
Followed recipe to a T and the chicken was way too vinegar”y” if that is a word. Couldn’t even finish it and sadly had to get rid of the other pieces.
Seems others like the recipe, but for us, no chance
Hey Curtis! That happens from time to time as our taste buds and flavors we enjoy are all different. I appreciate your tempered honesty and I’m just going to imagine that “get rid of the other pieces” meant you fed them to something cute and furry that loves to get table scraps :). I’m sorry this one didn’t work out for you, it is a unique dish. Have a great day!
Hi Christy,
I want to try this recipe but I need to cook 1-1/2 chickens about 6 quarters. should I double your recipe or will it be enough?
I would double it, the main thing is going to be fitting it all in a dutch oven. If you stack it on top of each other, you’ll need to careful (because it will fall apart) allow the top layer to brown under the broiler and then flip the layers so the bottom layer can brown, too.
I’m going to make this using chicken legs so my question is, should I cook it for the same length of time when using just legs? Thanks so much!
I would Julie, just check on it about 15 minutes before it should be done.
I am going to try this tomorrow with regular pepper. I have tried Publix and Walmart and neither
Sorry, I can’t type. Neither had smoked Pepper. We don’t have a Kroger here. Has anyone found it anywhere else. I know I can order it online if I can’t find it locally.
Use smoked salt instead; 2t of fine salt is roughly equal to 1 T kosher. Then use regular pepper
The smell of vinegar turned everyone’s stomachs. I followed the recipe to the letter and it does taste like vinegar. Very disappointed, I made this for my husband’s birthday. He was not impressed.