Smoked Salted Black Tea Chicken

Typical menu for whole chicken will be either to do the Western style roast or Hainanese Chicken rice and I'm sort of bored with that. So when I open up the kitchen cabinet and saw the big basket of black tea there... well.. ok, I'm gonna try smoking the chicken.

Tools Required:

• Oven
• grill tray with the rack
• aluminium foil

Ingredients:

• whole free range chicken (mine 1.2kg)
• 1cup black tea
• 1/4 water
• 2tbsp coarse salt
• 2tsp himalayan salt
• 1/2tsp pepper

Steps:

1. Pat dry the chicken, rub it all over with the himalayan salt and pepper.
2. Mix the black tea with water and salt.
3. Place the tea mixture on the tray before placing the rack over it.
4. Place the chicken on top of the rack. Cover loosely with the aluminium foil to create smoke effect in inside the tray, allowing some smoke to escape.
5. Preheat oven at 100c for 10mins, then place the tray in. Reduce temp to 70c. Use the bottom heat function only
6. Smoke the chicken for roughly an hour to 1.5hrs.
7. Remove the aluminium foil and change to fan forced at 180c. Roast the chicken for another 25mins.
8. Once done, remove to cool for bout 10-15mins before cutting it up.