Whole Smoked Roasted Chicken With Lemon-Thyme Butter
This crowd-pleaser is not only incredibly simple and cheap but it can be done with minimum effort and maximum time saving on your pellet grill for all to enjoy.
Equipment
- pellet grill
- Meat thermometer
- Knife
- Apple pellets
- Tin foil
- paper towels
- Grater
Ingredients
- 1 kg Whole Frozen Chicken cleaned
- 200 g Garlic Butter
- Black Pepper & Salt to taste
- Fresh chopped savory thyme
- 1 Lemon
- Cayenne Pepper
- Olive Oil
Instructions
Step 1: Preparation of The Frozen Chicken
- Take the chicken out of the freezer and submerge it under cold water in the sink. Keep it in the packaging and leave it for rapid thawing. (min 20-25 minutes).
- Mix the Garlic butter, chopped thyme, grated lemon zest, and salt.
- Prime & set the pellet grill to an initial cooking temperature of 255F and wait until it comes to temperature. (min 6-8 minutes but may vary).
- Wipe down and clean contaminated surfaces.
Step 2: Thawing The Chicken
- Unpackage the chicken and put it on the grill grate facing up and out of direct heat. The smoke temperature should be slowly thawing out the frozen meat but not directly cooking it.
- Close the pellet grill lid.
- After around the 30-minute mark, check if the chicken has thawed and is warm to the touch. If so, we will be removing it to add our stuffing and seasonings. (An additional 1-2 minutes may be required if some parts of the chicken aren’t thawed).
- Set your pellet grill to 450F.
Step 3: Stuffing Your Chicken
- Gently create a gap between the skin and the unfrozen chicken breasts to massage the butter in. Repeat wherever else you can get under the skin and put any more you have into the cavity along with half a lemon.
- Put olive oil over the whole meat for crisp skin and then sprinkle as much pepper and cayenne to favor.
- Wrap completely in tin foil.
Step 4: Roasting The Chicken on a Pellet Grill
- Insert the probe into the foil-wrapped chicken and put it into the pellet grill on direct heat.
- Monitor until the temperature is around 140F which is 26F below the ideal internal temperature.
- Remove the foil and roast until 166F.
Step 5: How Long Do I Rest The Chicken?
- Remove and rest with the foil back on the top for 10 minutes.
- Carve and serve!