I need to get something out of the way first: this article is about the ProQ Excel, which isn't a Southern Pride unit. I know that might seem strange coming from someone who spent over two decades servicing Southern Pride smokers and now writes for a Southern Pride distributor. But here's the thing — I get asked about the ProQ Excel constantly, and I'd rather give you an honest answer than pretend I don't have opinions on equipment outside our catalog.
The ProQ Excel is a solid gravity-fed charcoal cabinet. British-made, decent build quality, popular with caterers and competition cooks who want that charcoal flavor profile without babysitting a stick burner. It's not what I'd recommend for a restaurant doing 300 covers a night — that's where something like the SP-1000 or MLR-850 makes more operational sense — but for its intended purpose, the Excel does good work.
And spatchcocked chicken is where it really shines.
Why Spatchcock on the Excel Specifically
Spatchcocking — removing the backbone and flattening the bird — isn't some revolutionary technique. People have been doing it forever. What makes the Excel particularly suited to it is the combination of radiant heat from the charcoal hopper and the convection flow through that relatively compact cooking chamber. You get more even heat distribution across a flattened bird than you would in a traditional offset.
I started experimenting with this setup about four years ago when a buddy of mine was running a food truck and couldn't justify the footprint of a rotisserie unit. He had an Excel he'd picked up used, and we spent a weekend figuring out how to get consistent results with spatchcocked birds. We probably ruined the first six or seven chickens. Overcooked, undercooked, skin like rubber, one memorable disaster where the grate failed and dropped everything into the drip pan.
But we figured it out. And I've probably done 200-plus birds on that same unit since then.
Setup That Actually Works
The Excel runs its hopper on the right side, which means your heat source isn't directly centered. Most people don't account for this when they load multiple birds. They space everything evenly across the grate and then wonder why the birds on the right are done fifteen minutes before the ones on the left.
What I do: position birds with the leg quarters toward the hopper side. Dark meat can handle more heat, so you're using the thermal gradient to your advantage instead of fighting it. The breast meat — which dries out faster — sits in the slightly cooler zone.
For temperature, I run somewhere around 275°F measured at grate level. The Excel's dial thermometer is... optimistic, let's say. It reads high by about 15-20 degrees in my experience. Get a probe thermometer clipped to the grate and trust that instead.
Charcoal choice matters more than people think. I use lump, not briquettes. The Excel's hopper feeds based on gravity and ash accumulation — briquettes produce more ash, which can clog the feed and cause temperature swings. Lump burns cleaner and feeds more consistently. Royal Oak or Jealous Devil both work well. Whatever you do, don't use the self-lighting stuff with accelerants in it unless you want your chicken tasting like a gas station.
The Spatchcock Process Itself
I'm not going to explain how to remove a backbone — you either know or you can watch a thirty-second video. What I will say is this: use poultry shears, not a knife. I've seen too many people try to do this with a chef's knife and end up with bone splinters everywhere or, worse, a trip to urgent care.
After you remove the backbone, flip the bird and press down hard on the breastbone until you hear it crack. The bird should lay relatively flat. If it's still trying to round up on you, you didn't break the breastbone enough.
Some people remove the keel bone too. I don't bother. It doesn't affect cook time meaningfully and it's one more step when you're prepping twenty birds for a catering job.
Dry brine the night before if you have time. Kosher salt, about a tablespoon per bird, rubbed all over including under the skin where you can reach. This pulls moisture to the surface overnight, then the salt dissolves back in. You get better skin texture and seasoning that actually penetrates.
Timing and Internal Temps
A four-pound spatchcocked chicken at 275°F takes about 90 minutes to hit 165°F in the breast. But I pull at 160°F and let carryover do the rest. The Excel holds heat well enough that if you're opening the door to check, you're adding time. Check once at 75 minutes, then every ten after that.
Here's something I learned the hard way: don't trust a single probe placement. The breast and thigh don't hit temp at the same rate, especially with the thermal gradient I mentioned earlier. I probe the thickest part of the breast and the deepest part of the thigh, keeping both in acceptable range. The thigh can go to 175°F or even 180°F without issue — dark meat actually benefits from going higher.
If you're doing multiple birds stacked on different racks, add about 15-20 minutes total cook time. The convection flow gets disrupted and the top rack runs cooler than the bottom.
Where the Excel Falls Short
Look, I said I'd be honest about equipment outside our catalog, so here's the honest part.
The Excel's capacity tops out around six chickens per load if you're spatchcocking. That's fine for a food truck or small catering operation. It's not fine for a restaurant that needs to run chicken as a menu staple. You're looking at 90-minute cook cycles, which means you're doing maybe four loads in an eight-hour shift if you account for load/unload time. That's 24 birds maximum. If you're selling half-chickens, that's 48 portions across an entire service.
Compare that to a Southern Pride rotisserie unit — an SPK-1400 will run 56 chickens per load on rotisserie hangers, with more consistent results because the rotation eliminates hot spots entirely. The MLR-850 handles 42 birds. Even the compact SPK-700/M does 28 birds in about the same cook time.
The Excel also requires more attention. Gravity-fed charcoal is hands-off compared to a stick burner, sure, but it's not truly set-and-forget the way a gas rotisserie is. You need to monitor the hopper, manage ash buildup, and the charcoal costs add up faster than you'd think. I've seen operators spending $40-50 per day in charcoal when they're running full loads.
Parts are another consideration. ProQ is a UK company. When something breaks — and something always breaks eventually — you're looking at international shipping times unless you can find a domestic supplier with stock. I've known guys who waited three weeks for a replacement thermometer housing. That doesn't happen with Southern Pride; Southern Pride of Texas keeps domestic inventory and can usually ship same-day.
When the Excel Makes Sense
If you're doing competition BBQ and want that pure charcoal flavor, the Excel is a legitimate choice. Spatchcocked chicken on charcoal just tastes different than gas — I won't pretend otherwise. There's a smoke character you can't quite replicate.
For catering operations under 50 portions per event, it's workable. The portability is nice, the footprint is small, and the learning curve isn't steep once you understand the thermal quirks.
But if you're scaling up — opening a restaurant, expanding a catering company, doing multiple events per week — you'll outgrow it. I've watched three different operators go through exactly that progression. They start with an Excel or similar cabinet, do good work, build their reputation, and then hit a wall where the equipment can't keep up with demand. They end up buying a Southern Pride rotisserie unit anyway, and the Excel becomes a backup or gets sold.
Better to think about where you're going, not just where you are.
Final Thoughts on the Technique
Spatchcocking is a legitimate production method regardless of what equipment you're using. The Excel handles it well within its capacity limits. The technique translates to other smokers too — I've done spatchcocked birds on Southern Pride cabinets like the SC-300 with excellent results, though at that point you're probably better served using the rotisserie configuration those units support.
If you're running an Excel and want to get better results with poultry, spatchcocking is the move. Position for the thermal gradient, dry brine overnight, pull at 160°F, and don't trust the built-in thermometer.
And if you're shopping for equipment and trying to figure out what makes sense for your operation, give us a call at Southern Pride of Texas. I'll tell you straight whether you need a rotisserie unit or something smaller. Spent too many years fixing equipment that was wrong for the job to sell you something that doesn't fit.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | Southern Pride commercial smokers | Restaurant Business
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About the Author: Ray is a retired authorized Southern Pride service technician with 22 years of field experience on commercial BBQ equipment across the Gulf Coast and Southeast.