Hello everyone,
I am completely new to smoking and just received, assembled, and seasoned my smoker and its ready to get started. I was planning on just smoking one chicken this weekend to get my feet wet but my mom decided she was going to bring me two more chickens to smoke so that when they come we will have enough for some more guests that I told her could come. With that being said I have now gone from smoking one single 5# whole chicken to smoking three 5# whole chickens. I have no idea what I am doing and I've only been able to find posts that talk about smoking two chickens at a time or smoking chickens with other meat which dont really help me. I plan on brining my chickens for 10 hours, rinsing them, drying off the skins, putting a little rub on them and then smoking them over apple wood chips at 250-300 degrees. With one chicken that should only take roughly 3.5-4 hours to smoke/cook. My question comes in to having 3 chickens now. How much longer will it end up taking to smoke 3 at a time instead of just one? I am using a masterbuilt 30 two door propane smoker and will be monitoring my temperature of my smoker and one of the chickens with a thermopro tp08. I also have an instapen type thermometer to check the other chickens every hour or hour and a half or so. I just need to have a good idea of how long this is going to take me to smoke/cook these chickens. I will probably place two chickens on the top rack and one on the next rack down which I know will probably cause the lower one to take a little longer to cook but thats ok because we will be able to at least get started eating on the other two. I plan on preheating my smoker to about 300 degrees so that when I go to put the chickens in the smoker I wont have to worry as much about the temp dropping down to much.
So How long should I expect 3 whole chickens to take to smoke/cook?
also as a bonus how long should I expect 2 whole chickens to take to smoke/cook?
I am completely new to smoking and just received, assembled, and seasoned my smoker and its ready to get started. I was planning on just smoking one chicken this weekend to get my feet wet but my mom decided she was going to bring me two more chickens to smoke so that when they come we will have enough for some more guests that I told her could come. With that being said I have now gone from smoking one single 5# whole chicken to smoking three 5# whole chickens. I have no idea what I am doing and I've only been able to find posts that talk about smoking two chickens at a time or smoking chickens with other meat which dont really help me. I plan on brining my chickens for 10 hours, rinsing them, drying off the skins, putting a little rub on them and then smoking them over apple wood chips at 250-300 degrees. With one chicken that should only take roughly 3.5-4 hours to smoke/cook. My question comes in to having 3 chickens now. How much longer will it end up taking to smoke 3 at a time instead of just one? I am using a masterbuilt 30 two door propane smoker and will be monitoring my temperature of my smoker and one of the chickens with a thermopro tp08. I also have an instapen type thermometer to check the other chickens every hour or hour and a half or so. I just need to have a good idea of how long this is going to take me to smoke/cook these chickens. I will probably place two chickens on the top rack and one on the next rack down which I know will probably cause the lower one to take a little longer to cook but thats ok because we will be able to at least get started eating on the other two. I plan on preheating my smoker to about 300 degrees so that when I go to put the chickens in the smoker I wont have to worry as much about the temp dropping down to much.
So How long should I expect 3 whole chickens to take to smoke/cook?
also as a bonus how long should I expect 2 whole chickens to take to smoke/cook?