BBQ Chicken Thighes- a Step Up From Caveman Method

Caveman style of cooking is where you take something like chicken and throw it in the fire, leave it sit for a little while and then pull it out and pick all the black stuff off it. While that is effective it doesn't always taste that great. This instructable is about a better method that gives results that you can be comfortable sharing with someone else.

Step 1: Chicken Prep

My preferred type of chicken for BBQ'ing is chicken thighs.  The reason is that thighs are a dark meat and so tend to not get as dry as white meat does. They also have a fair amount of fat which helps to produce the smoke that makes it taste really good.
I buy a bulk package which is usually enough for a full kettle.

Unpack your chicken and put it in a big bowl. Add some BBQ sauce as you add the chicken pieces and stir it so all the pieces are coated.  Do NOT remove the skin, the skin keeps the thighs from burning when they are first put on the grill.

For the sauce I use any regular BBQ sauce, something like one from Kraft or Hunts. It takes about half the bottle.

THIS is the most IMPORTANT step. Take the whole bowl after you have mixed in the sauce and put it on the rack in your oven.  If you forget this step, when you come back from lighting your kettle you will find a very happy cat on the table, a large mess and not as much chicken as there was when you left.

Step 2: Kettle Prep

After sitting all winter buried in the snow, it is now time to bring back to life the ancient kettle. 

TAKE THE SPARE KEYS OUT OF IT.  These are the keys you left there so that when you walk out of the house in the dead of winter, believing that your keys are in your coat pocket but find that they are not, you can now get back into your house without having to dig through a 4 foot snowdrift to get to where you normally keep the spare keys. And after all, nobody is ever going to look in an old kettle for the house keys.

Remove the top grill and scrape all the leftover charcoal into a pile. Remove all the ashes. Refill the bottom rack with more fresh charcoal , replace the top rack which is still nasty from last fall and hose the whole thing down with charcoal lighter fluid. I don't bother to clean the grill in between fires. The left over fat helps to protect it from rusting and when you light the next fire it  gets burned clean. So no, its not lazy, its practical.

Stand back and using a torch start up the magic.

Step 3: Add Chicken

Once all the charcoal is glowing nice and hot, get your bowl from the oven and place the thighs, skin side down on the rack. Putting the skin side down protects the meat from getting scorched. Move quickly because when you put these on the fire it will flare up right away.

Step 4: Let It Smoke

Place the lid on the kettle and let it start smoking.
Ten to fifteen minutes is what it takes , depending on how hot your fire is.
Open it back up and turn the thighs over. You will note that some of the skins stick to the grill. That's fine, it did its job.
Replace the lid and cook for another 10 or 14 minutes.
It should now be done just right. Smoke flavored, hot and juicy. Place it in a clean bowel and take it in for the cat.

A new theory for why the dinosaurs became extinct: they tasted like chicken, and everything likes to eat chicken.