50 minutes PBC chicken

[Ernest]

You can get high heat with blue bag if you go 1 to 1 ratio lit and unlit coals. Then let the unlit coals ignite in the basket before hanging the bird.

[Ernest]

Hey that's what The Pit is for!
You're welcome,

[Huskee]

I considered it. But I like tending a fire, which is what drew me to the EOS. I think my next investment will be a Weber platinum performer to increase my baby Smokey Joe's capacity. Then someday a Primo XL. Not sure a PBC will find a spot with this lineup.

[HC in SC]

Man, compared to all the babysitting on the ECB, the PBC can make a good cook out of anyone. Mine kept a solid 300 for about 7+ hours firt time use - following Noah' instructions. It fills a nice gap between the slow smoker and the gasser for me. Killer price and support for everything you get and its 100% made in the USA by a veteran. You out to try one just for giggles. I am sure you'll be impressed.

[Huskee]

This is a very insightful post, and I do not even own a PBC. Many thanks for your time & effort here Ernest!

[fzxdoc]

Ernest / Kathryn - I'm going to have to find Jerods customization post!

I've got it, Matt, or at least one of them. It's from our days over on the general Pit Barrel Cooker forum.

John C's question: Is that an airflow modification at the top of that pic? Is that to increase temp w/out having to crack the lid?

Jerod's answer: Yeh, to a certain extent. If I don't get a really good light, like I did last night (twas half asleep), I still have to crack the lid for a little to get things rolling. Then the pipes help keep things rolling along.
Some times I have to close up the pipes if things keep climbing too high.

The photo:


This gives you an idea of what it looks like. I'm sure Jerod will be along soon to post a nicer photo.

Kathryn

Edited to add: I just now saw where you brought Jerod's topic up on his mod here:

http://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/forum/accessorize-your-pit/4779-this-is-for-jpp-pit-barrel-modification

Good info and pics there.

[smarkley]

Thanks HC --

Daddgummit... I need some chickens now. I think I figured out how to do it with Kingsford blue... or come close anyway. I want to play.

Also, I have been toying with the idea of cutting a hole in the lid of the PBC and mounting an adjustable vent there. It would be really cool to get those high temps and not fiddle with the lid all the time. With one of those you could prolly leave both rebars in.

[HC in SC]

Great instructional post Ernest! I have learns a lot about PBC cooking from you, Kathryn and smarkley. Actually, reading you guys' posts help me pull the trigger on the PBC purchase. I just wish I wasn't such a working stiff and had more time to play with it. Thanks again for the post!

[mtford72]

Ernest / Kathryn - I'm going to have to find Jerods customization post!

[fzxdoc]

Yes, you're right, Ernest it was Jerod who added those great-looking exhaust pipes with valves.

And I agree that the skin on my earliest, low temp, longer cooks was not crispy but that's before I started drying it out in the fridge, using a salt/baking powder rub on it, and amping up the PBC temperature.

Cooking chicken in the PBC has been my most interesting learning curve--each time I do another one I change another parameter and see how the bird turns out. Good thing every chicken turns out tasty thanks to the forgiving nature of the PBC design. I'm at the fine tweaking stage now. Thanks to some of your recommendations, I'm going to have a great time with my next chicken cook.

Kathryn

[Ernest]

Kathryn, most of the comments after the 2 hour chickens is skin is not that crispy. Part of that could be prep, part low PBC TEMP.
Now, as for my experiments, I did not see any drop in quality of the chickens cooked faster. So I say to myself why wait >1 hour for chicken when I can have it at the table in a shorter period and taste great?

I think Jerod added some alien contraption to his PBC to act as an exhaust. Or maybe I saw it somewhere on the interwebs, nah, it was Jerod.

[fzxdoc]

Matt, you've noticed many of the same things that I have. I've recently begun to suspect that keeping the heat up is more a function of pulling that second rebar (if possible) than with the two charcoal types that I have tried so far. And of course the higher the heat, the quicker the chicken cooks.

Letting the charcoal burn for 10 minutes after pouring the burning coals into the basket (and before adding the meat) and leaving the rebar out has made a huge difference in the cooks where I want to maintain the higher temps.

The proof in the pudding was in my last spatchcocked turkey cook. Fourteen pounds and it cooked in 90 minutes. That's the average time of my two-chicken cooks. I scratched my head and figured that I'd use exactly the same setup for my next two-chicken cook and see if the time to cook them drops down closer to an hour.

I'd love to be able to do two-chicken cooks in a predictable amount of time, say one hour, reproducibly time and again. That's my goal. Oh and with crispy skin.

The next thing to research is whether the chicken cooked in such a short time is as flavorful/smoky/juicy as those cooked during longer times at lower average PBC temperatures. I've cooked chickens at as low as 230 ave (2.25 hour cook time) PBC temps and as high as 290 (90 minutes cook time) and have not discerned a difference in flavor, smokiness or how juicy the meat was. The meat is always pulled at 160 breast temp.

Kathryn

[fzxdoc]

I did a two-chicken cook with Kingsford Competition exactly the same way I had done the previous two-chicken cook with Kingsford Original. Neither the temperature of the PBC nor the time to cook the chickens were significantly different. The only difference was that the Competition burned longer, as in several hours longer.

Kathryn

[mtford72]

that was just the comment I was going to make! IMHO, the leaving the bar out is probably 75% of the explanation for the extra heat. I've cooked at very steady higher temps with either the bar out or a slight lid crack.

I'm seriously considering drilling a hole in the top of my PBC to create a very small vent, then adding a disk to enable adjustment of the aperture.

All the PBC graphs I've produced from my cooks shows the temp hovering in the 275 - 290 range for a while, then falling off. The difference between 310 and 225 is considerable in terms of cooking time. Trimming the vent to keep it higher shouldn't require much of a hole, as the airflow increase should only need to be marginal. I'm hoping that it will be small enough to maintain the moisture characteristics of (what I'm guessing is) nearly static airflow that (I think!) is the reason the PBC works so well. (Did I hedge my comments enough?!?)

Hopefully that will add to the predictability of the timing. As an aside, I've cooked two 14 lb turkeys, using the same coals, venting and lighting. The time difference was quite considerable.

Matt

[Ernest]

Come to think of it, maybe Harry Soo is right about controlling temps using the exhaust vent? My rebar is left out, look at the temps..................