Cornish Hens Brining and marinating

Q#1 I'm smoking 2 cornish hens today. I'm gonna soak them in a brine for a cpl of hours. But I was also thinking about using an injectable marinade. should this be done before you brine or after.

Q#2 Is it posible to take your favorite rub say a 1/4 cup of rub to say a quart of water, boil in a sauce pan, let it cool, then use that as an injectable marinade.

Q#1 I'd say that's OK if the marinade does not contain salt, but, IMHO, it may be overkill.

Q#2 That's OK too, but again, watch out for oversalting. Most injectable sauces contain butter as most of the liquid, but you can try water.

All of these may work individually, but combining two or more may be over the top. I'd suggest you try this with something cheaper, like plain old on sale chickens, rather than expensive game hens.

Yeah thanks for the heads up. I've never tried a brine before so I'm not sure what to expect. So I'm gonna just go with a brine today.

DropaStone wrote:

Yeah thanks for the heads up. I've never tried a brine before so I'm not sure what to expect. So I'm gonna just go with a brine today.

Those are pretty small birds, so watch how long you cook them. I've always done well with Steve's method of putting a little butter UNDER the skin ...

Rubbed in olive oil, sprinkled lightly with season salt, straight on the CG @ 225 till temp hits 180.........Delicious!

Those look mighty tasty, and very evenly grilled. Did you have to tent the wings with foil ??

Nope.
They were kind of an afterthought. Our dinner was a couple hours from being done, and my son wanted a "baby turkey". I just put them in with the rest for a couple hours. Flipped them over an hour in.
The legs, and wings were juicy too.

Sweet lookin birds.

I bet they taste as good as they look too.

=)

The hens looked good. I butterflied and grilled a whole Amish Chicken on my CarGriller last weekend. I put some home made sundried tomato pesto under the skin and plopped it right over a hot fire. I turned it once and it cooked about 45 minutes or so. Tender and juicy and tasted great.