BBQ Smoked Chicken Thighs with Alabama White Sauce

A lower calorie spin on the infamous creamy, tangy Alabama white sauce meets BBQ smoked boneless chicken thighs in this simple recipe. With no time in a marinade, you can have these smoked chicken thighs on the table in about an hour. They’re perfect for serving with your favorite healthy sides or shredding for sandwiches and sliders, loaded bbq chicken nachos, and more!

Alabama White Sauce Smoked Chicken Thighs Recipe Walkthrough

You’ll find a printable recipe at the bottom of this post, but I always like to add a visual walkthrough with more tips that I can’t fit in the recipe card. If you’re in a hurry, you can always skip down and jump back to the walkthrough if you need some extra help.

And as a quick equipment note, I used the same Traeger Pro Series 575 and Traeger Signature pellets I used in my smoked jalapeño poppers and Traeger BBQ pork tenderloin recipes.

Homemade BBQ Rub

I used a double batch of the seasoning blend from my slow cooker BBQ chicken thighs. It’s brown sugar centric, so you could use something like the zero-calorie substitute, Swerve Brown, to reduce the carbs in your smoked chicken thighs. This recipe was inspired by the bbq half chicken recipe from Traeger Grills. That recipe calls for a Traeger BBQ rub, which you could use to save some time making your own rub.

Can I use chicken breast instead of chicken thighs?

While this recipe calls for boneless skinless chicken thighs, you could swap them for chicken breast to reduce the fat and calorie content. To minimize cook time modifications and maximize seasoning penetration, you can place the chicken breasts between plastic wrap and pound to an even thickness before adding the BBQ rub.

Do I need anything under the rub?

It’s up to you, but I don’t think you need it here. You can get in there and work the BBQ rub into the chicken thighs without any need for a binder. And unlike my Instant Pot BBQ chicken thighs, you’re not really worried about sticking to the pot without something like olive oil. The hot grill grates will take care of that.

To learn more about rubs, check out this breakdown on the science of rubs.

Smoking the BBQ Chicken Thighs

You want your BBQ chicken thighs to reach an internal temperature of 155ºF to 165ºF or somewhere in the neighborhood in this step. You want your smoked chicken thighs to be just about fully cooked before dipping in the Alabama white sauce since that will cool them down. You’ll continue smoking them after dipping, but you don’t want to worry about getting them back up to temperature once the sauce is on.

Alabama White Sauce

If you’ve never had Alabama white BBQ sauce, it’s essentially a creamy, tangy, black pepper forward sauce. There’s mayo, lemon juice, vinegar, lots of black pepper, and a little horseradish. It’s a really unique BBQ sauce that goes perfectly with a brown sugar heavy BBQ rub like the one I used for these smoked chicken thighs.

If you’re not a fan of mayo or creamy sauces, I get it. You could definitely dip your smoked chicken thighs in your favorite traditional BBQ sauce instead of the white sauce. I’d recommend the Trader Joe’s sriracha and roasted garlic BBQ sauce I used for our Traeger Smoked BBQ Chicken Meatballs.

In this step on the smoker, you’re looking for the white sauce to thicken and turn into a glaze on top of the smoked chicken thighs. The sauce should fully adhere to the chicken. So if you have any runoff, leave the chicken on the smoker a few extra minutes.

Serving Your Smoked Chicken Thighs

Here’s a handful of side dish ideas to go with your BBQ chicken thighs:

• air fryer brussels sprouts 5 ways
• garlic butter air fryer green beans
• Traeger smoked smashed potatoes (smoked at 375ºF for convenience)
• healthy potato salad
• cast iron bacon and brussels sprouts
• creamy macaroni salad
• smoked sweet potatoes

We have a twice smoked potatoes recipe that would be great with these Alabama white sauce smoked chicken thighs. You could throw the bacon on at 325ºF before cranking to 375ºF to smoke the chicken and start the potatoes and smoked garlic. It might take a little finesse with the timing but if you’re a seasoned smoker, I’m confident you could make it work. And if you have a helper indoors with an air fryer, you could use our air fryer twice baked potatoes instead.

If you have lots of leftovers, you could always chop the chicken up for chicken salad or shred the smoked chicken thighs for wraps and sandwiches, loaded BBQ chicken nachos, sliders, BBQ chicken mac and cheese, or any of your favorite pulled chicken recipes.

However you end up serving your Alabama white sauce smoked chicken thighs, I’d love to hear about it. Drop any thoughts or recipe questions in the comments below or come back and leave a recipe review if you love it!