The Setup

The sous vide was a new tool at the time, and like most new equipment, I was looking for reasons to use it and justify the purchase. I’d seen someone post about doing something similar on Facebook, and since I was already searing other sous vide items in the cast iron, it made sense to try the same finish on chicken. Ten chicken thighs and five Italian sausages, vacuum-sealed and sous vide at 150°F for 3 hours.

Sous Vide, Then Smoke

After the bath, everything went onto the smoker with cherry wood — all 10 thighs and all 5 sausages together.

This was one hour in on the smoke

This was two hours in on the smoke

Two Finishing Methods

Once everything came off the smoker, I split the batch to test two different finishing methods. Five thighs went onto a sheet tray, headed for the propane grill along with all five sausages.

The other five thighs went into a hot cast iron skillet instead.

The Verdict

The cast iron thighs looked better — a deeper, glossier finish than the grill version. But there wasn’t a noticeable taste difference between the two. Given the amount of food I typically cook at once, the propane grill is the more practical choice for the crisp-up stage — cast iron just doesn’t have the capacity when you’re doing volume.

As for whether the sous vide step itself made the chicken better than my normal smoke-then-grill method, I don’t remember enough about this specific cook to make that claim years later. The photos document the experiment and I remember the finishing comparison, but this three-step process never became part of my normal routine — I still smoke chicken and finish it on the propane grill, same as always.

This wasn’t the only time I tested sous vide against my normal smoke-then-grill method — see Chicken Wings – Throwdown for the other one, which tested smoke-first against sous-vide-first on wings. For the full picture of what I’ve learned across all these experiments, see The Complete Guide to Smoked Chicken.