Smoked chicken..... and getting requests for more!

Nice! Every summer there is a small 4-H fair about 20 minutes from my house. Part of the fair is the cookshack, very rustic looking, and the only place on the fairground to buy food. They have a couple locally owned ice cream trucks bring in that and soft drinks, but that's about it. Anyway, they do a version of 'roadside chicken' on a pair of cinder block pits. They use sections of chain link fencing for grating. Two layers of fencing are used, top & bottom. The pipes they use for 'em are made from 1" conduit pipe and each one can hold a full 30 # case of split chickens. Each pit can do 3 in a shot, but they usually only do two at a time to so that one section can be loaded or unloaded... fresh cooked birds come off more or less continuously for 2 days straight. Short story is that they make big money for the fair with this setup. 3 years ago, they bought 85 cases of chickens and sold over half of it the first day. They ran out on the second. They were getting 6 bucks for a quarter chicken, 9 bucks a half, all with sides of coleslaw, corn on the cob, and a choice of either mac or potato salad. Everything is made from scratch, and delicious doesn't even begin to describe it. They do sell hotdogs & burgers at the cookshack too, but the bird is what people come for.
 
So they are doing like a sandwich grate? I love that idea. Beats the heck out of turning individual pieces all day.

I actually want to make grates for the big grill like that but dont know if that will happen.
 
I was just giving and electric smoker as a gift. I loved smoked food but have no ideas how to use it.
 
Johnny N. said:
So they are doing like a sandwich grate? I love that idea. Beats the heck out of turning individual pieces all day.
I actually want to make grates for the big grill like that but dont know if that will happen.
Click to expand...

Lot less dangerous and far more sanitary too. It takes two guys to flip them over, one on each side of the pit. They are usually the pitmasters, and they have a whole crew backing 'em up. The pit crew are usually older 4-H kids getting the prep job of putting the chicken on the grates, covering 'em with the second grate layer and tying 'em up with wire. The pitmasters use a 50/50 mix of mixed hardwood & charcoal, and pit crew gets the job of lugging that stuff around. They bring in fresh wood & sacks of K as they need it from a storage shed about a mile away. Usually only from a skiploader bucket that does the ferry job, but they get to load and unload it at either end. The kids usually ride in a big wagon towed behind the loader. They are exhausted by the end of the day.

The pitmasters don't have it easy either. Seasoning gets done right after the birds get put into the grates, and they are lightly basted with seasoned water a half dozen times while on the pit.When the birds are cooking on the pits, they make sure that the fires are banked right. The guys pretty much have a schedule for flipping the grates and doing the unload. The unload gets done over a 4' square stainless steel pan that was donated a number of years back. That gets cleaned out with hot soapy water after each cycle. Everything needs to be cooked evenly... and well done. They have one grate that they use exclusively for refiring undercooked meat. The pitmasters take each chicken half and cut it open to see if it's done enough. If not it goes back on the fire. Repeat till you sell out. As you might suspect, the whole affair is watched over by folks who work for the board of health. The pitmasters tell me that it's not unusual for them to drop by for a snack every so often.

The corn is locally grown, and brought in straight from the fields. They have 4 big gas fired cookers working to keep up with the demand. The younger 4-H kids working the fair get the job of husking the corn and labelling what farm it came from. It's all cooked in the same way, water and bit of salt... 10 minutes on the boil.... done. It really doesn't get much fresher unless you pick it from the field yourself. They hang a shingle out from the cookshack saying what farm it came from as an advertisement. The idea is that people can try out corn from different farms...perhaps go after the fair and buy some for their own kitchen.

Here's a pic of them working in back of the cookshack. You can kinda see how big the pits are. Scroll around to see more, there's lots to see.

http://www.westford.com/4h/2010/page4.htm
 
I love it. Looks like an absolute great event. As much work as I know it is, I'd love to do something like that. I love that they have the kids involved.

Meadow Creek makes a chicken cooker that has the sandwich grates. No better way to cook large amounts for sure.
 
What's really great about it is that the fair directors haven't allowed commercial interests to overrun the place like many 4-H fairs. No carnival rides, people selling crap... it's 95% local kids showing what they can do with livestock and farm product. The other 5% must be approved by the state 4-H board, but the Middlesex board gets the final say. A few years ago, they had baby animals all over the place, with a sow actually giving birth over a 10 hr stretch at the fair. She had 9 piglets.... damn that barn was crowded as that was going on. Seeing puppies & kittens being born is one thing, seeing a calf coming into the world isn't something you see everyday. There are always veterinarians on hand to make sure that stuff like that doesn't go bad medically speaking as well.
 
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