Unlike brisket and pulled pork, which take many hours to smoke, smoking a whole chicken requires less time. And with only three essential steps to follow, anyone (even beginner grillers) can get the hang of it. And smoked chicken is super versatile. Delicious to serve for dinner, smoked chicken also makes for excellent sandwiches and is delicious atop a green salad.

Read on for the tools and guidelines that will help you learn how to smoke a whole chicken like a pro.

How to Prepare a Chicken for Smoking

Smoking a whole chicken can take as little as an hour and change including prep time. The three essential steps are:

1. Prepare the bird based on your preferred cooking method
2. Season it
3. Smoke it

Brining a Chicken

In order to ensure your meat is flavorful to the bone, try out a good brine.

Brining your bird is the best way to infuse flavor deep into the meat and keep it juicy. No matter how much salt you use, a dry rub will only penetrate so far into the meat, but submerging your bird in brine pulls salt and flavor into the muscles -- and keeps it there throughout the cooking process.

"I use a brine to impart moisture in my poultry," says Traeger Pro Matt Pittman. "I keep it simple with an old school salt brine. You can use 1/2 cup salt and sugar plus a tablespoon of your favorite BBQ sauce mixed in a gallon of water."

A basic brine is ½ cup of salt (or 1 cup of kosher salt) for every gallon of liquid. You’ll need enough liquid to fully submerge your chicken. Many people — like Matt — use sugar to balance the salty flavor, and this also helps caramelize the skin, giving it an appetizing brown color.

You don’t have to use only water for the liquid. It's a lot of fun to experiment with broths, juices, beers, and more to change up the flavor. Just be wary of salt and sugar content if you’re working with juices or cooking wines. You’ll want to adjust your dry ingredients accordingly.

You can also add all sorts of herbs, vegetables, and spices to your brine to infuse even more flavor into your meat. For a more flavorful brine, check out this recipe by Dennis the Prescott.

How Long Should I Brine Chicken?

Ideally, you’ll let your bird brine overnight in the fridge, but even letting it brine for an hour will make a noticeable difference in flavor. The longer it brines, the saltier it gets, which is why we don’t recommend brining for over 24 hours. Brining for too long results in oversalted meat.

Smoked Chicken Injection

You can also inject the brine into your chicken. "I used to be a chicken briner but now am an injector," says pitmaster and Traeger Ambassador Doug Scheding.

Injecting brine is "easier and (adds) much more flavor deeper into the meat," he says. Injection is a mixture of phosphates (salt on steroids) and flavor from dissolved seasonings. It adds about 10-17% moisture to chicken.

If you want to start out simple, Doug recommends chicken broth. If you're ready to go with a more advanced brine — like the one Scheiding used to win Grand Champion at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo — try this Traeger chicken injection recipe.

How to Dry Brine Chicken

Another technique recommended by Doug Scheiding is dry-brining. This involves salting the chicken, then letting it sit in the refrigerator while the salt is absorbed. "Basically the salt on the skin dissolves and moves into the skin," says Doug. "This helps give it more bite through or perhaps even crispiness depending on how it is cooked."

Doug describes this technique in his Traeger beef ribs recipe. The same steps will work well for chicken, too.

Spatchcocking a chicken is removing the backbone of the bird so that it can lay flat in a pan or grill. A spatchcocked chicken will usually cook more evenly, and in a shorter period of time. Our Traeger experts recommend spatchcocking as the best way to smoke a whole chicken.

This expert tutorial has all the information you need to spatchcock at home.

The basic process simply involves using a large knife to cut on either side of the backbone, through the ribs, then discarding it. Once the backbone is gone, you split the breastbone, allowing you to spread the bird flat. This recipe for Spatchcock Chile-Lime Chicken is an example of how spatchcocking can save you time — it cooks in just 40 minutes!

How Long to Smoke a Whole Chicken

The cooking time for a smoked whole chicken will depend on the size of your chicken, how you've prepared it, the temperature you've set, and the final product you're looking for. The important thing is to cook it until it's at a safe temperature for eating (165 degrees Fahrenheit); this can take between 3 and 4 hours if smoking low and slow.

The method above will give your bird a smoky flavor, but may not result in crispy skin. One way to get smoky flavor and crisp skin is to smoke the bird for about an hour and then crank up the heat and roast it until the skin is crisp and the chicken is cooked through. This also decreases the total cook time.

Reheating Smoked Chicken

To reheat, it’s perfectly fine to leave meat on the bone. Create a tent of tin foil to cover your smoked chicken, and before closing it, add a tablespoon of water. This will create steam inside the foil that cooks the meat quickly while moistening it.

Heat your oven or pellet grill to 325 degrees and cook until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees. The best way to ensure your internal temp is right where it needs to be is with a MEATER wireless meat thermometer.

If you’re eager to use or discard the carcass you can use shredded chicken in all kinds of recipes. Just be wary of overcooking it. Typically, you’ll want to make sure the vegetables are done or close to done before adding precooked meat.

Replace the grilled chicken in this Loaded Grilled Chicken Tacos recipe with your leftover smoked chicken. The recipe has instructions for making fresh pico de gallo, guacamole, and spiked sour cream to serve with the tacos — serve them over warm tortillas or in crispy shells, your call.