Easy Smoked Chicken Breasts

Whether you have a smoker or just a regular grill, here are the secrets you need to making delicious, juicy smoked chicken breasts at home.

Do I Need To Brine Before Smoking Chicken?

Chicken breasts really benefit from brining, with an improvement in taste, texture, and juiciness. If you’re new to brining, here is everything you need to know. But here are the basics:

My standard brine recipe is: 4 cups of cold water and 6 tablespoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt OR 4 1/2 tablespoons Morton’s kosher salt OR 3 tablespoons fine or table salt.

Brine chicken breasts for 4 hours before smoking them. I usually say that the optimum amount of time for brining chicken breasts is between 1-2 hours (you can see my experiments for perfectly brined chicken breasts here). However, because you’ll be cooking the chicken for a long period of time, the extra moisture that the extra brining imparts means that you won’t end up with bone-dry chicken breasts. The salt in the brining solution also amps up the flavor. If you are sensitive to salt though, I recommend reducing the brining time to 2 hours.

How To Season Chicken Before Smoking

By now, I’m sure that you know how much I like to layer flavors. And this recipe is no exception. I think that the smoky flavor from the wood used can be complemented with a simple spice rub. I love to make my own seasoning blends so that I can control the ingredients and the amounts that go into the blend.

The spice blend in the recipe below makes the perfect amount for four large chicken breasts, so you won’t have another bottle of spice blend sitting in your cupboard taking up space. It’s made with brown sugar, paprika, kosher salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. If you’re brining first, omit the salt from the blend.

If you prefer to use a pre-packaged spice blend, make sure that it doesn’t contain black pepper (and if you’re brining first, check the salt too). In my experience, black pepper turns bitter and unpleasant during the smoking process. If you want to use pepper, add it to your chicken after smoking.

What Kind Of Wood Should I Use?

The final layer of flavor in smoked chicken recipes comes from the wood chips. Just like with Smoked Chicken Thighs, my preference is apple wood for chicken breasts. It has nice subtle, sweet flavor that doesn’t overpower the chicken and works beautifully with the paprika and brown sugar in the spice blend. 

Other woods that work well with chicken are cherry, maple, and oak. If you like a really smoky flavor, you may like hickory wood chips but I think it can be a bit strong for chicken.

If you would like to learn more about the flavors of different type of woods available, here’s an article that outlines types of woods, flavors, uses, and even suggests woods that you shouldn’t use.

Using a Smoker To Smoke Chicken Breasts

My smoker has a firebox to one side, so when I’m placing the chicken on the smoker grill, I make sure to arrange the breasts so the thinnest part is away from the main heat source. This aids in even cooking. If you have the ability to arrange the charcoal or heat source in your smoker as an indirect heat source, I suggest that. The setup for yours may vary, so make sure to refer to your product guide. 

I like to check the temperature of the meat at around 60 minutes. Your instant read thermometer should read 160˚F. If it doesn’t, check the chicken every 15 minutes after that. Once the internal temperature of the thickest part of the breast reaches the appropriate internal temperature, remove the chicken to a platter and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Make sure the temperature rises to the safe 165˚F while it rests.

Tip: Use a probe thermometer to continuously monitor the internal temperature of your chicken breasts. Slip the probe into the thickest part of a chicken breast. When it reaches 160˚F, take it off the heat.

One of the most important steps in this smoking process happens after the cooking, and that is to allow the meat to sit before slicing. If you don’t, you’ll lose all of those flavorful juices that we’ve worked so hard to develop. Five to seven minutes will give the fibers in the meat time to relax and the juices to redistribute. Really, what’s another 5 – 7 minutes after the care you’ve taken in preparing and smoking the chicken breasts?

At this point, you have some spectacular chicken breasts with a lovely sweet layer of smoke and spice on the exterior and a juicy, slightly smoky interior ready to eat. I like to serve BBQ sauce and coleslaw or potato salad with the smoked chicken breasts.

Using a Regular Grill To Smoke Chicken Breasts

It’s actually really easy to smoke chicken breasts on a regular grill. All the steps in the recipe below are the same. All that really changes is that you need to make an aluminum foil pouch for wood chips or pellets (either kind works, just make sure you’re buying something that was designed for smoking with).

First, tear of a 16-inch piece of heavy duty aluminum foil. Add a large handful of wood chips or wood pellets to the center. Do not soak them. Wrap the foil all around the chips created a well-sealed, flat pouch. Poke the top side of the pouch with a fork 10-20 times. More pokes will give more smoke.

Prepare your grill for indirect cooking over low heat. To do this, set one burner to medium and keep the others off.

Put your foil packet over the burner that is set to medium heat. Cover the grill. The packet will start smoking in about 5 minutes. That’s when you’ll add your chicken breasts, placing them in the coolest area of the grill, which will be over one of the burners that is not turned on.

Since using a grill in this way is less exact than a smoker, I recommend, as above, that you use a probe thermometer to monitor the internal temperature of the chicken breasts, taking them off when they reach 160˚F. That will usually be between 40-60 minutes. Let them rest for at least 5 minutes off the heat, covered loosely in foil, so that they come up to 165˚F and so that the juices inside redistribute before you slice them.

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