Step 1

Lay the thighs out on the cutting board and remove any visible fat with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors.

Step 2

I tried to cut the chicken into pieces that are bite size but that is a very subjective term. Whatever you visualize as bite size, cut them that size. I got about 6-8 bites from each thigh.

Step 3

Put the chicken pieces into a zip top bag and pour about ¼ to ½ cup of olive or vegetable oil over the top of them.

Step 4

Massage the bag to make sure all of the chicken is coated with the oil as this helps the rub to stick to the meat.

Step 5

Add ½ cup of Jeff’s rub to the bag and, once again, massage the bag really well to coat all of the chicken.

Step 6

Place the bag of rubbed chicken in the fridge for at least an hour but overnight would not hurt anything.

Step 7

When the chicken pieces are finished marinating in the rub, pull them out of the fridge. They will smell really good but avoid eating them raw and definitely do not lick your fingers ;-)

Step 8

I don’t like to be stingy with the bacon so I cut mine in half. You may be able to cut it into thirds if you wish as long as it will fit around your bite size pieces of chicken.

Step 9

Lay a piece of the chicken on a piece of the bacon and roll ‘er up!

Step 10

Push a skewer through the bacon wrapped chicken piece..

Step 11

Do that about 5 more times on the same skewer.

Step 12

Make as many skewers as you can with the chicken that you cut up.

Step 13

Set up your smoker for cooking at about 250°F if possible. Cooking these a little hotter will help the bacon to crisp up and chicken can definitely handle the higher heat just fine.

Step 14

I used pecan just because it’s my favorite and it goes really well with a lot of things.. poultry is one of them.

Step 15

As usual, to make it really simple, I loaded the finished skewers onto bradley racks. These racks are about 11 x 15 and if they will fit on your smoker grate, they are very, very handy to have.

Step 16

Set the bradley rack on the smoker grate or you can place the chicken skewers directly on the smoker grate.

Step 17

Smoke cook at 250°F for about 1.5 hours, sauce them real good then let them go another 30 minutes before taking them out of the smoker.

Step 18

Use an instant read thermometer such as the Thermapen (reads in around 2-3 seconds) to check each piece and make sure it has safely reached 165°F.

Step 19

Pull them off the sticks to serve as appetizers or serve an entire skewer to each person as an entree with home fries or even some baked beans.