Smoked Chicken Rub Recipe: How to Season Smoking Chicken

A smoked chicken spice rub is a mixture of seasonings and spices—for example, paprika, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, and chili powder. You can use this spice mixture to coat a whole chicken, chicken breasts, chicken wings, chicken legs, or chicken thighs before you make barbecue chicken (or BBQ chicken) or smoke the meat in a smoker. The rub ingredients are typically spicy, sweet, and smoky, and cooks usually intend for them to complement a barbecue sauce.

You can add a smoked chicken rub to raw chicken any time before smoking the chicken. The purpose of a dry rub is less to tenderize the chicken and more to flavor the meat as it smokes, so there’s no need to season the chicken twenty-four hours in advance. A rub will have the same effect from a flavor standpoint, whether you add it to the chicken five minutes or five hours prior to smoking it.

A dry rub differs from a dry brine, which is a mixture—usually of water, salt, and other flavorings—that helps the chicken retain moisture during the smoking process. If you plan to cook using both a rub and a brine, you should dry brine the chicken first, pat it dry with paper towels, and then add the chicken dry rub.

The goal of smoking chicken is to end up with moist and flavorful meat. To keep the chicken moist during the smoking process, consider trying one of the three methods below, no matter what ingredients you might be using in your dry rub recipe:

1. 1. Baste the chicken with barbecue sauce. Using a basting brush, baste the chicken with a homemade or store-bought barbecue sauce (or BBQ sauce). This helps to seal in moisture and also creates a sticky and caramelized crust on the chicken skin. You can serve more sauce on the side for dipping.
2. 2. Spray the chicken with apple cider vinegar. Fill a spray bottle with a combination of apple cider vinegar and a little water. Spray the chicken with this mixture while it smokes to keep the chicken moist. This has the potential to prevent a crispy crust from forming, depending on how often you spray the chicken. However, the flavor of the apple cider vinegar will complement the chicken if you’re smoking it over applewood wood chips.
3. 3. Wet-brine the chicken. Instead of brining a chicken prior to seasoning and smoking it, try using a food syringe to inject a wet brine into the chicken as it smokes. This isn’t a traditional way to keep smoked chicken moist, but it works. The brine evenly disperses throughout the hot chicken, plumping up the meat and preventing it from drying out in the smoker.