Smoking whole chicken....stand up or lay down???

[fishin couillon]

If you smoke a hole chicken, do you lay it down or stand it up???

Have the Masterbuilt Electric smoker...plenty of room but just wondering.....

[Ben Danbleume]

I always spatchcock my whole chickens for smoking.

[eyra_kid]

Last two I did, I stood them up on my beer can chicken cooker, sans beer. Turned out really good.
Interesting article on amazingribs.com about beer can chicken cooking. They recommend standing up as a superior cooking method, but save the beer for drinking. I'm down with that.

[sdbrison]

Lay it down

[DixieChicken]

I like both ways. Love the chicken stands to get the smoke up in those puppies.

I used my Masterbuilt unit (with the glass door) till I burned up the heating element, and would lay them down in it. For my daughters wedding in 2013 she said she wanted me to cook. Started prepping pork butts and chickens on Wed morning. Cooked 4 pork butts, and 6 chickens. Put the first of them on Thursday morning. Pulled the last of them off (the chickens) around 5:00am Saturday morning. The wedding was at 11:00!

Use a pellet smoker now, or the big honking stainless grill as an offset smoker, OR.... the Kamado Joe.

[Clif Kincaid]

I've always had better success at high temp and spatched. Skin and moistness was better. Don't hate because of that word haha.

[basscla]

Have done both. Stand up with low heat (225-250) and also spatchcock on high temp (300-325). Both are good. The high temp method is so much faster, that I have been doing that more lately.

[Transom]

If you are actually smoking them you will not really see a difference no matter how they are oriented as long as your airflow is good. If you have one side of your smoker hotter than the other like many offset designs I would be sure to rotate the birds to cook them evenly if you are cooking several at a time.

[Gator_Fan]

Personally I don’t like too much smoke on poultry, I prefer cooking around 325-350. Natural lump charcoal gives me enough smoke flavor.

[Cray]

I have done them both ways in my master built. Can’t tell 2 cents worth of difference. Do mine at 225 and only one tube of chips.