I smoked a chicken on the grill yesterday. Set the “remote control” thermometer to let me know when the bird 175 degrees. That happened after about 5.5 hours. When that happened, I stuck in a regular thermometer and an instant-read thermometer into the breast. They were borderline. So I let it go another 15ish minutes.
At that point, all three thermometers insisted the breast was 180+ degrees, and the little plastic popup thingy had popped also, so we brought the bird inside.
Carved the breast. Juicy, looked cooked inside, outside layer was slightly pink but that’s to be expected with smoked meat.
Carved the legs. One leg bone came completely out of the meat with a gentle tug, which is usually a good thing. But the joints, when I tried pulling them apart, looked bloody. And some of the juices inside the cavity of the bird were red when I tilted it to let them run out. The meat itself looked cooked enough but I wasn’t quite ready to risk eating it.
So we stuck the rest of the bird in the oven for a half hour… and ate the breast meat anyway. Nobody’s throwing up or even feeling “off”, so clearly that was done enough.
Could we have eaten the dark meat? Anyone ever seen the juices still a bit red, and bloody joints, while the bird was really cooked and safe to eat?