Cajun Smoked Chicken

Name: Cajun Smoked Chicken
Total time: 2 h
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Southern
Ingredients: Chicken breast; Olive oil; Paprika; Black pepper; Salt; Garlic; Fresh thyme; Dried oregano; Cayenne powder; Onion

Cajun Smoked Chicken, plated as one serving.

270 kcal a serving, against 510 for the traditional version. That is 240 kcal off, or 47%, with 41g of protein. Serves 4. 2 hours, plus marinating.

What the traditional version is

Classic Cajun smoked chicken starts with a whole 1.6kg chicken, skin on, rubbed with a mix of spices, salt, and oil, then smoked low and slow over wood until golden and cooked through. You carve it at the table, making sure the skin follows the meat onto each plate. The juices run, the spices bite, and dark and white meat alike are full of smoke. You can't claim to have improved on this - discarding the skin is the price you pay for the swap.

What changed, and what each change costs

Whole chicken, skin on, to chicken breast, skin off

Dark meat and skin bring almost all the fat and half the calories - and all the best bits. Using only chicken breast, skin off, means the final meat is pure protein with far less fat attached. The spice rub has to work twice as hard.

What it costs you. You lose all the joy of the smoky skin - it's a culinary tragedy, and anyone who tells you different is lying. The breast meat doesn't hold on to smoke or juiciness the same way, so you need to be on it with your smoking and don't let it dry out.

Olive oil in the rub cut in half

Breast meat doesn't need quite so much help to crisp up, since you're not roasting skin. Cutting the oil helps keep things lean, but the spice has to find its way onto the meat without burning.

What it costs you. You lose a little of that fat-basted mouthfeel and some sticking power for the spices, but most of the flavour survives the cut.

Double the spice rub, especially paprika and garlic

Chicken breast is bland on a good day. To make up for the lack of skin, you need to go in strong on the rub, or the smoke will be wasted.

What it costs you. The meat hits harder on the spice but doesn't carry it as well as skin. You'll get a punchier outside and a milder inside, and that's the deal.

What goes in it

The ingredients, without the quantities. The weights are what the figures below are computed from, and they are in the book.

Chicken breast
Olive oil
Paprika
Black pepper
Salt
Garlic
Fresh thyme
Dried oregano
Cayenne powder
Onion

How it starts

Mix all the dry spices, salt, garlic, and herbs in a bowl.
Slice the chicken breasts lengthways so they're flat but not too thin - about 2cm thickness is right.
Set up your smoker or barbecue for indirect heat at 120C, with a good handful of wood chips (oak or hickory if you want the classic).

The rest of the method, and every weight, is in Authentic-ish Southern.

The numbers

Per serving	Traditional	Lightened
Calories	510	270
Protein	34g	41g
Fat	38.7g	8g
Saturated fat	9.8g	1.5g
Carbohydrate	5.7g	8.1g
Protein per 100 kcal	6.7g	15.2g

Every figure is computed from the recipe's own weighed ingredient list against public food composition databases. The appendix in Authentic-ish Southern prints the exact database row used for each ingredient, so any number here can be checked. How every number is computed sets out the method.

The method is in the book

This has all the spice and smoke up front, but let's not kid ourselves - binning the skin is like tearing the last page out of a novel. Chicken breast tries, and the smoke does most of the heavy lifting, but it never quite adds up to the whole bird, crispy and juicy, with spice-soaked skin. Still, you get a smoky, spicy plate of meat that's all protein and barely any fat, and you can eat a double portion without worrying about your next cholesterol check. If you really miss the skin, you're not alone - neither am I.

The quantities and the method for this dish are in Authentic-ish Southern, along with 50 more. Buy the paperback