This Whole Chicken Recipe makes some of the juiciest, most mouthwatering chicken you’ll ever have. Your family and friends will think it’s smoked chicken, but you’ll know the secret! Now it’s up to you whether you want to tell them.

How to Cook a Whole Chicken

Ingredients

Chicken: For this whole chicken recipe, you’ll need, well, a whole raw chicken. Now, some stores will sell them already split in half. If they don’t, however, you’ll need to do that yourself. Just grab a sharp knife and completely halve the chicken into two sides.

Butter: Salted butter is pretty much my go-to in most recipes. However, unsalted will work just fine as well.

Hot Sauce: Lousianna works perfectly, but for a spicier option, I also recommend Tobasco.

Cajun Blackened Seasoning: Most store-bought cajun seasonings are very high in salt. Therefore, I make my own. Check out this recipe for Cajun Blackened Seasoning!

Liquid Smoke: Because this chicken isn’t smoked, I felt it needed some smokey flavor added. Careful, though; it doesn’t take much liquid smoke at all!

Directions

This whole chicken recipe has two main simple steps. To sous vide and grill the chicken. But first, you’ll want to get some extra flavor in there. So injecting the chicken could be the ‘first’ step, I suppose.

Either way, let’s get started!

Begin by preparing the Sous Vide Circulator in a large pot of water to 145°f for 2 hours.

Next, prepare the whole chicken injection. This is a mixture of melted butter, cajun-blackened seasoning, hot sauce, and liquid smoke.

Melt the butter in a glass measuring dish or bowl and add the cajun seasoning, hot sauce, and liquid smoke. Stir the mixture together to combine the injection thoroughly.

Next, using a stainless steel injector equipped with a large needle, inject the butter mixture into the breast, thigh, and leg of each chicken half.

Now, place each chicken half in a large vacuum seal bag and spread any leftover injection over the top of the chicken halves.

Vacuum-seal the bags and place them in the prepared Sous Vide water bath.

While the chicken is cooking in the water bath, prepare a charcoal grill at 400°f.

As soon as the chicken is done cooking Sous Vide, remove them from their bags and place them on the hot grate facing up. Season the topside with more cajun seasoning.

Allow the chicken to get some color and darkened skin, flip the chicken over, close the lid, and allow the fire to crisp up the top side of the chicken. This should only take about 5 minutes a side at the most.

Remove the chicken from the grill and serve as is or cut the pieces apart and serve as you’d like.

In Conclusion

This whole chicken recipe also works perfectly with chicken quarters. The same process produces the same results every single time. Thanks to the sous vide start, you’ll cook to a precise, predictable temperature ensuring the perfect flavor and juiciness in each piece of chicken.

Please don’t hesitate to ask in the comment section if you have any questions. In addition, if you’ve made the recipe, I’d love to hear how it turned out for you and your family.

If you like these types of recipes, then you’ll love these too!

Smoked Pork Butt

I truly appreciate you visiting Chicken Fried Kitchen. Without you, I’m just talking to myself.

So, thank you for stopping by, and as usual…

Happy Cooking!

-Jeremy