Pellet Fan
All Things Considered => General Discussion--Food Related => Topic started by: Queball on October 02, 2017, 07:34:50 PM
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From what I've observed, appearance plays a major role in competition turn ins. Although not competing, I think all of us who cook want our finished dishes to be visually appealing. One irritant for me has always been the way chicken skin shrinks up on chicken thighs. We've got some solid competition cooks here on the site, and I'm sure there is a method to negate this. I was hoping they might share some ideas with us non-competitors on how to get it crisp or "bite through" but not shrivel up ...... and improve our presentation.
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Some cooks take the skin off, scrap the skin and put it back on, sometimes with meat glue.
I am too lazy for that. I trim all the fat, including digging it out of the inside pockets of the thighs, cut off the Pope's Nose and trim the pieces up into a uniform shape. I leave the skin as "long" as I can on the sides, trim it up and wrap it under the thigh. You want a nice little mummy of a thigh. Place your chicken skin side up on the grill. Cook for 1 hour at 225, maybe 250. Take your chicken off. Put the chicken in a steam tray and pour a little sauce over each piece. Cover tightly with aluminum foil, don't let any steam escape. Cook for another hour at 250*
Take the chicken off. You can spoon the juices from the pan over it again or dip in sauce. I then put back on the grill at about 300* for 5 to 10 minutes. This should give you bite through skin if that is important to you.
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I think the main thing as far as just not pulling back like that is trimming the thigh down as Kristen mentioned. I trim probably 25% of the thigh meat off then the skin wraps around nicely and also under the thigh. Relatively low temps helps too. If you grill the thigh I'm not sure there is much you could do.
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from what I have found through my experiments on whole birds, if I start low and go for a while and then slowly bump the temps 30 degrees or so at a time giving the skin and chicken time to react to temp changes. I have found that going from 225 to say finishing temp of say 375 the fast change in temp is what causes the shrinkage.
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Some cooks take the skin off, scrap the skin and put it back on, sometimes with meat glue.
I am too lazy for that. I trim all the fat, including digging it out of the inside pockets of the thighs, cut off the Pope's Nose and trim the pieces up into a uniform shape. I leave the skin as "long" as I can on the sides, trim it up and wrap it under the thigh. You want a nice little mummy of a thigh. Place your chicken skin side up on the grill. Cook for 1 hour at 225, maybe 250. Take your chicken off. Put the chicken in a steam tray and pour a little sauce over each piece. Cover tightly with aluminum foil, don't let any steam escape. Cook for another hour at 250*
Take the chicken off. You can spoon the juices from the pan over it again or dip in sauce. I then put back on the grill at about 300* for 5 to 10 minutes. This should give you bite through skin if that is important to you.
This is not just for competition. It is good eats too
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Kristen,
These are bone in chicken thighs or deboned but skin on? .... Does removing the fat have any impact on the skin shrinking? Is that why some remove the skin and scrape it?
FMT,
You trim the perimeter edges to make the diameter of the thigh smaller?
BD83,
Obviously direct grilling the skin to crisp it isn't going to fly because of the temperature issue.
Do you ever pin the skin with tooth picks for example on the underside to help negate shrinkage? Ever oil the skin to aid in crisping?
Thanks! for the idea food.
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This is not my pic. I pulled one from Google Images, then drew my own cut lines. Where I drew the black is kind of where I cut. It squares them up, and there is typically plenty of extra skin.
(https://i.imgur.com/FzGTxY8l.jpg)
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My thighs are bone in with skin on. I also square them up when trimming, but don't cut them like FMT's photo. I tend to trim all around. A comp thigh at turn in is a lot smaller than what comes out of the package. I am not sure if removing the fat has an impact on the skin, I just don't want a judge to get a mouthful of fat.
Someone who scraps will have to answer that question. I think it removes fat from the skin.
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As compared to sausage where "Fat is Flavor", it's the opposite here it appears. .... Just want pure chicken taste or fat can impact the taste of the rub and sauce? .... Looking for uniformity, how many extra chicken breasts do you need to bring to get the presentation pieces to look the same once you've trimmed and cooked them?
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I think fat still equals flavor here, but one way to almost guarantee you get bite through skin is scraping the fat. You almost can't screw it up that way. If you don't scrape there are plenty of ways to get bite through, but in my opinion also more window for errors. Obviously, these comp guys that do it week after week have it the process down. When you do it here and there, scraping just kind of takes some of the guesswork out. I certainly wouldn't bother scraping skin for a home cook. If I was watching fat intake, I would just leave the skin off entirely when I cooked it.
In my personal comp story, I had never cooked chicken for a comp before. I used a brine plus a buttermilk marinade to get the moisture that may have been lost by scraping the skin, and not using the braising method. I cooked probably 24 thighs at the AR, but if there wasn't a ton of people too feed I would have cooked one 12 pack. I wasn't overly concerned with uniformity. There will always be 6 out of 12 that are close enough for me.
Trooper and Tech may be the uniformity guys to answer. They have a pretty meticulous mini muffin loaf pan process that results in an OCD like uniform product. And I mean that as a compliment. I like a clean nice box and meat, but I don't have that gene.
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I am removing the fat chunks because a judge is required to just bite -- they don't have a knife and fork and can't cut out a pocket of fate if they eat it -- and it isn't pleasant. I cook what is in one pack for a comp -- usually between 12 and 16 pieces.
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I re-read some of the original comments. Queball, you mentioned crisp a couple times. I believe Bentley has commented on this in the past. Bite through isn't necessarily interchangeable with crisp. When you braise the thighs like most comp teams it renders the fat enough to become bite through. The ones I have tried like that have never been crisp. So it can be crisp and bite through, but also just bite through. Not that I'm saying you were confused on anything, just clarifying if needed.
I'm not saying its not possible, but I don't believe I've ever personally had truly crispy chicken skin that wasn't either rotisserie cooked, or deep fried.
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I used a method very similar to Kristin's in the 2012 Royal. As you can tell by the posts above my feeling is that Chicken is the hardest meat in comps due to all the meticulous prep work. Kinda why I switched to doing ribs. Although it was a great learning experience practicing during the summer of 2012. My wife ate a lot chicken that summer.
As FMT says Trooper and TechMOgogy would be the guys to ask. I have watched both of them at a comp.
Z
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ZCZ,
Coming in 24th in ribs in 2015 ...... Obviously a good move leaving that chicken behind. It's just amazing how much science and subtle art go into the competition world. ... and we're just talkin about chicken.
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Yup crisp and bite through are 2 different things
For my family we like crispy which equals shrinking skin unless you do whole birds.
For comp it is completely different prep process and cooking technique however I am no expert.
Dan
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Appears TMG is playing it close to the vest ...... Keepin those "trade secrets" to himself. 8)
For comp it is completely different prep process and cooking technique however I am no expert.
Dan
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If I were him, I sure would. He does a great chicken and it is as perfect as you get in looks. I bet it took him hours of practice and I would not share for free. Although maybe he will share a pic of his turn in box.
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Certainly two different animals. I've done pretty well with chicken in competition this year. I also cook a lot of chicken at home for the family. I approached it to completely different ways.
In competition, bite through skin and crispy skin are two different things. I don't know of any teams that really go after crispy skin. Not even sure you could accomplish bite through and crispy skin without drying it out. I do scrape skins but not the extent that most people do. I think chicken fat does add flavor and I try to leave a good portion of it on the skin. I do take the heavy fatty spots off though. I cook on the grate until i get the color i want, then pan the chicken with fluid creating that braising effect. It must have a tight seal. I also take those thighs to a much higher internal temp.
The chicken I cook at home, is usually bone-in skin-on split breasts. And we usually end up pulling the skin off anyway. I still Brine those the same way and I will even pan them with fluid once in awhile. But I don't take them nearly as hot. But at home I'm I'm much less concerned about skin since we're normally pulling it off and just eating the white meat off the breast. If I am cooking to eat the skin at home, I really don't concern myself with skin creep. It just tells me that it's getting nice and crispy.
I apologize for any errors in this post. I'm using voice to text from my phone.
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Hey hey - no secrets here I am doing nothing that you guys can not do/figure out and while I did do countless cooks before the 2015 AR and fed many of my neighbors for weeks...
I am happy to share BUT since 2015 I have only done it a handful of times - will need to go to my book and lookup the steps.
I can tell you that much like FMT stated, I was/am OCD in the steps.
I truly am a believer that you only have x amount of control so for the parts (technique, prep, steps, time, procedures, etc) I can control I document it and do the EXACT same things with the EXACT same items (like same sauce, same rub, etc).
Obviously I can only control the chicken quality based on what my butcher/Costco/store tells me - that I consider a non-controllable item and a big one as it can make a huge difference (quality of chicken but also size of thighs, fat content, etc).
I am in Canada and it was fun traveling to the AR with 24 frozen chicken thighs in my suitcase! I brought my own as it is what I practiced with and I did not want to just go buy some at a local Kansas store. Other non-controllable things are things like weather (temp, wind, humidity) and the smoker. I was lucky as I practiced on my FEC100 and was able to cook on an FEC100 at the AR but even it was different than mine and it flamed out and so I had to crank up the temp - not a good thing!!
Now with all that said and for as good as it may sound... the AR judges thought my chicken sucked and judged it accordingly so once again, I am no expert, just an OCD guy that made things as well as I could :)
This was my box (I will look for my step by step cooking instructions that are a help but much of it is just practice, practice, practice until you get your own steps down and your own trimming methods etc)
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I tasted that chicken and I think I am a pretty typical CBJ. The only thing which probably got points off is that the chicken was what I considered very hot. Bent thought it tasted perfect. You probably got a table of judges like me who don't have a high heat tolerance. Change that one factor and it is -- winner, winner, chicken dinner!!!! Thanks for the pic. They sure are pretty.
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TMG,
Just havin a little fun! ...... Your presentation box is just stunning. Thanks for posting the picture! .... Give us some inspiration! The finish on that chicken is so clean it looks like it was spray painted. ... Amazing!
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And to make his look even better I will post mine just to give you something to compare it to. Mine are not all shaped exactly the same, turned different directions, and in hindsight very splotchy. I did not remember them being quite that splotchy looking at the AR.
Dans looks nearly perfect to me. (https://i.imgur.com/SSqAYDUl.png)
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I tasted that chicken and I think I am a pretty typical CBJ. The only thing which probably got points off is that the chicken was what I considered very hot. Bent thought it tasted perfect. You probably got a table of judges like me who don't have a high heat tolerance. Change that one factor and it is -- winner, winner, chicken dinner!!!! Thanks for the pic. They sure are pretty.
I 100% agree - too hot/too much spice!
As I thought about it and my OCD system - I am pretty sure I screwed up somewhere with the rub and added too much heat (and perhaps too little of something else)?
Oh well, that's the way it goes and I do think I received ok scores for appearance. If anything the sauce is probably a bit thick and some really just don't like the uniform look!
Regardless, it was a fun time, fun experience where I learned, made great friends and memories! I thank all who were there and esp. Larry for making it happen. My post is way off topic now so I will stop and just say I hope we can make an AR PelletFan appearance happen in 2018!!
Dan
Edit - I found my list - perhaps not super helpful but gives you an idea (attached)
It does not talk about the trimming and prep as I did that all before hand.
I built custom tongs to hold the thighs for removal and dunking
etc, etc
The boxes for actual time on the clock