Please enjoy and carefully read our chicken thighs smoker recipe.
Chicken thighs are quick and easy to smoke as well as being less expensive, fattier and more full of flavour than chicken breasts.
This recipe is for 10 chicken thighs, which will feed around 4-6 people depending on appetites and the side dishes you add.
Dry Rub for Chicken Thighs Smoker Recipe
- 1 tablespoon fine sea salt
- 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon chilli powder
- 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 4 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons onion powder
Chicken Thighs Smoker Recipe – Step 1 Prepare the Thighs
Take your chicken thighs out of the fridge around 30 minutes before you want to smoke them, to let them come up to room temperature.
We don’t want to put cold meat into the smoker as it will affect the temperature and the timing of the cook.
If your thighs were in the freezer make sure they have thoroughly defrosted for the same reason.
Pat the thighs down with kitchen paper to dry them.
If any of your thighs have excess skin or fat on them, trim with kitchen scissors.
As much as possible try to keep a uniform size to your chicken thighs to ensure an even smoke all round.
We are going to leave the bone in for flavour and to keep the structure of the meat.
Brush or spritz each of your thighs all over with a little oil or butter. This will stop the skins of the thighs drying out in the smoker.
It also helps the dry rub stick to the skin.
Now make your dry rub by combining all the ingredients in a small bowl and mixing them together.
Starting at the underside of each chicken thigh coat each one generously with the rub, taking care to cover the thighs all over.
Chicken Thighs Smoker Recipe – Step 2 Smoke the Thighs
Get your smoker up to a temperature of 250°F.
Add your wood or wood chips to the coals of the smoker. We recommend a mild fruit wood like apple or cherry, but hickory is also a common wood for smoking chicken (although it will impart a stronger smoke taste than fruit woods). Oak also works well too.
Place the chicken thighs directly on the grills but away from any open flames so they don’t burn.
At 250°F it will take somewhere around 1 1/2 to 2 hours to smoke your chicken.
As ever you want to cook to internal temperature not to exact timings. In this case you want your chicken thighs to come up to 165°F before you sauce them, and then a final internal temperature of around 170-175°F.
Check your thighs with a meat thermometer at the thickest point of the meat.
This is a short smoke so you may not need to refuel at all, or maybe just once.
Check your thighs about an hour into the cook to make sure everything is going to plan, and take an internal temperature reading.
They probably won’t be quite ready yet, but this will give you a sense of how much longer the meat will take.
Once they are up to 165°F, it’s time to brush them with BBQ sauce.
Chicken Thighs Smoker Recipe Step 3 – Sauce the Chicken
For the last 15 minutes of the smoke, we are going to brush the thighs with BBQ sauce.
This will give the thighs a lovely sticky, sweet glaze and beautiful flavour.
If you want a great recipe for homemade BBQ sauce try here:
www.bbqsmokergrill.org/how-to-make-bbq-sauce/
If you want to use a ready made one, Pit Boss do a great range of BBQ sauces.
This recipe aims to get a tasty, juicy saucy bite from your chicken.
If you want a crispy skin on the chicken thighs leave out the sauce, and finish your chicken off at a higher heat of around 375°F.
Chicken Thighs Smoker Recipe – Step 4 Rest the Meat & Serve
Leave the chicken thighs to rest for around 15-20 minutes.
As tempting as it is to serve them straightaway, resist and leave them to allow the juices to redistribute evenly across the chicken meat.
Serve the smoked chicken thighs with fries, BBQ beans, baked or mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, coleslaw or even a tasty green salad with red onion rings.
Not to mention some lime wedges and extra BBQ sauce.
If you enjoyed this recipe you may also enjoy our ‘Chicken in the Smoker Recipe.’
Or our blogpost ‘Smoker Recipes for Chicken.’
For another great article on the subject of ‘Chicken Thighs Smoker Recipe,’ try here:
https://bbqingwiththenolands.com/smoked-chicken-thighs/
