Moroccan Smoked Chicken

Joseph's turn to write!  (And yes, we're still on that Moroccan kick.  I made Moroccan Spiced Vegetables to go with this...)

--------------------

Today is the Excelsior Springs BBQ and Fly-In - a marvelous annual event where BBQers from all over converge on the town to compete for the Grand Championship. Here's the web page - http://bbqontherivercontest.com/

I really love this event, but Kate's knees can no longer do the kind of walking necessary to enjoy it. So I decided to break out my little smoker and have our own event. Given that the whole town is filled with traditional BBQ, I decided to opt for something different. Inspired by a recipe for Moroccan Grilled Salmon that I received this morning via e-mail from Paleo Recipe A Day, I adapted it to chicken. I used their spice recipe exactly:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger or 1 1/2 teaspoons dried
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I use sea salt)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Mix together into a paste and spread on the chicken. On a grill this makes a crust but in the smoker it just kind of oozes around and flavors everything. I cut the back and the dorsal bone out of the chicken so it would lay flat - the same as you would do if you were going to grill it using a brick. But I just put it in the smoker and let it go. It took rather longer than I expected - almost four hours - but it was well worth the wait. We already ate half of it before Kate thought to take a picture, but here's the other half still in the smoker:



Tomorrow will be the Fly-In portion of the event, held at the Excelsior Springs Airport. We'll be having our monthly sketch crawl out there and I may try to catch a ride on one of the planes. We'll see...