Dutch Oven Smokehouse Chicken | Southern Plate (2024)

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Dutch Oven Smokehouse Chicken is tenderized and slow-cooked in a Dutch Oven. The meat becomes extra-tender and stays that way beneath a skin that is crisped and browned in the final step of the cooking process. Read on for the mouthwatering recipe.

Serve this with a heaping helping of Alabama White Barbecue Sauce and you might feel as if you’ve gone to Glory.

In order to make the smokehouse chicken I grew up with, you’d need a pit building that has been smoking chicken since the 1950’s and pit masters who work on it all day to get it just right. But on the off chance that you, like me, don’t have your own barbecue smokehouse, this is how I do it and it comes in as a very close kissin’ cousin — awfully good in it’s own right.

Recipe Ingredients:

• Cider Vinegar (more about that under the next photo)
• Kosher salt (or regular)
• Smoked Paprika (or regular)
• Hot sauce (the red kind)
• Crushed Red Pepper
• Brown Sugar (light or dark)
• Smoked or Regular Black Pepper

Helpful Kitchen Tools

• Dutch Oven

Oh yeah, you’re gonna need some chicken. Bone in, skin on. No exceptions if you want this to be just right.

Seriously, if you don’t have the exact ingredients I am using (other than the type of chicken), it will be ok — what you have on hand will do just fine. But the chicken must be bone in, skin on.

*If you really want to give it a smokehouse taste, add in a little bit of liquid smoke. I don’t use that on here because I get too many emails when I use it that are actually worse than the emails I get when I use food coloring — and that is sayin’ something — believe me!

How To Make Dutch Oven Smokehouse Chicken

Pour your vinegar into a dutch oven or deep baking dish.

A 9×13 would work for this as long as you are careful not to spill the liquid when putting it in and out of the oven.

Why Add Vinegar?

The chicken doesn’t taste like vinegar — don’t worry. The vinegar is a base that tenderizes it and infuses it with all of the other flavors. Once you add everything else to the vinegar in the next step, it becomes just a base. However, your kitchen will smell like cider vinegar and it WILL clean your sinuses out when you open the lid. If you can’t deal with that then you should have someone make this chicken for you :). However, if you like my slow cooked pulled pork, you’ll love this dutch oven smokehouse chicken. I used that recipe as a starting point to come up with this one.

Now add in all of your other stuff, everything except the chicken.

Stir that up good and well until the sugar is dissolved. The vinegar helps this happen pretty fast.

Now put your chicken in, skin side down.

Put a lid on your dutch oven or cover your baking dish with foil.

Bake this at 300 for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and carefully remove lid (watch for the steam). Flip chicken over and put lid back on. Return to oven for another 45 minutes.

After that time, remove lid and keep pot in oven. Place oven on broil for 15-20 minutes to brown and crisp skin, watching carefully so chicken doesn’t burn.

This is what mine looked like after 20 minutes under the broiler. I removed some of the liquid to get more parts of the chicken browning (the parts under the liquid won’t brown).

And this is what you have on your plate.

Now go ahead…Dig in to this crispy moist meal of goodness. Dutch Oven Smokehouse Chicken might just be your new favorite way to eat chicken.

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

~Albert Einstein

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