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[Free Mr. Tony]

Several years ago I turned in chicken on the pelletheads team. I don't remember exact details, but the score was 170 or so, and 66/520 or so placement. Several months after The Beast from pelletheads asked for some tips because he was doing a small contest. I gave him the entire recipe, and process. I was going through some emails this morning, and happened across this one. If anyone is interested, it is the full recipe for my chicken that year. I've copied and pasted what I sent to him:







I completely remove the skin from one thigh at a time. I leave the others in the cooler while trimming each one. They take a bit to do, and are much better to trim cold. Take the skin off, and set aside. Clean up the meat, removing pretty much any visible fat. Turn the thigh so the bone side is up.  On one side of the bone there will be a visible tendon near the bigger end of the bone. Take a paper towel, and grab hold to rip it out. Kind of same idea as removing the rib membrane. There is also a good size vein that runs pretty much parallel to the bone. Usually you can take a small knife, and kind of wedge underneath the vein so that you can grab it with a paper towel and remove it. Once the tendon and vein are removed you can sort of square off the meat so that it's a little smaller for the box or just for presentation. There is usually an oddly colored little hunk of meat up by the larger bone end. I just cut that all off right up to the edge of the bone to make a nice neat square shaped thigh when it is laid out flat. Make sure there are no loose bone fragments on either end of the bone. If so, hack them off. So now you should be able to fold the meat flaps over the bone and tuck under to make a nice little thigh when placed meat side up.

For the skin, you need a very sharp knife and a paper towel. Hold about half of a skin piece with the paper towel with the skin side on the cutting board. So all the fat is facing up. Scrape across the other half with the knife. Scrape until pretty much all the fat is removed, and you have a transparent skin. Then flip it around, and do the side you were holding with the paper towel. Some of them will rip when doing this. You can usually just cut the ripped area out, and still have plenty left to wrap around the thigh since you trimmed them down quite a bit. After you are done scraping, you can trim the oddly shaped sides off so you have a nice uniform piece of fat free skin. Wrap the skin back around the thigh, and tuck under the bottom. Repeat with all the thighs. This takes awhile, and you will be tired of doing it about four thighs in.

After you have all your thighs trimmed, I brine them for about
1 1/2 hours. I put them in an aluminum pan.

Brine:
6     cups     water
5     Tbs       kosher salt
5     Tbs       brown sugar
1/4  tsp       cloves
1/4  tsp       pepper

Just whisk strongly to dissolve everything into the water. Pour over the chicken in the pan, cover, and refrigerate. After 1 1/2 hours I drain the brine off, then do a buttermilk marinade.

Marinade:
Half pan of buttermilk. Pour enough in the pan to cover thighs. Sprinkle lakeshore drive seasoning (can be purchased online at the Spice House) over buttermilk. Add:

1/4     tsp     pepper
1/4     tsp     ground clove
1        tsp     rub (recipe below)
Dash of Texas pete hotsauce

Swirl together in pan to combine. Marinate for about 8 hours or so. After 8 hours drain off buttermilk, and rinse chicken with water.

Next, let the chicken air dry:

After rinsing off buttermilk, use paper towels to dry the chicken off as much as possible. Put all the pieces on a wire rack over a sheet pan. You may need two wire racks and sheet pans. Neatly shape the thighs, and place the skin over the chicken like you would like it to be presented. During the drying phase the skin kind of adheres itself to the chicken so this is the best time to make it look how you want it to for cooking. Once you have them all looking nice, place the racks, uncovered, in the fridge or cooler. The goal here is to dry the skin out as much as possible so that it will be bite through after cooking. I timed this at the royal so that I just left them in the cooler overnight, then pulled them out the next morning when I was ready to cook. So probably 8-10 hours of drying or so.

Day of cooking: oil, rub, cook, and sauce

Take the racks out of the fridge or cooler. Lightly oil one thigh with olive oil, then sprinkle with rub. I don't rub it in. I just sprinkle evenly all over.

Rub:
1/4    cup     lawreys seasoning salt
1/4    cup     Tony Chacheres creole seasoning
1       Tbs     Accent (msg)
1       Tbs     garlic powder
1       Tbs     onion powder
2       tsp     pepper
1/2    Cup     paprika + 1 tbs+ 1 tsp
2       tsp     tarragon
1/4    cup     white sugar
1/4    cup     brown sugar
2       tsp     New Mexico chili powder (spice house online)
1        tsp     Chipotle powder (spice house online)
2       tsp     white vinegar powder (great American spice online)
2       tsp     Worcestershire powder (great American spice)
2       tsp     thyme
2       tsp     smoked paprika (spice house online)
1        tsp     allspice
1        tsp     cloves

Spray the rack with pam in each spot under where the thigh will be before placing the chicken back on the rack after sprinkling with rub. The skin should stick to the meat pretty well at this point, but if not shape the thigh as you put it back down on the rack. I cook them right on the wire racks over the sheet pans, so this will be your final placement before cooking.

After you have oiled and rubbed each thigh, cook on the wire racks over the sheet pans at 350 grate temp until internal temp of 160 is reached. To check temp, go in with your thermometer from the side right along the bone. This ensures you are getting an accurate temp close to the bone, and also you aren't poking holes in the skin since you are going in from the side and parallel to the bone.

Once 160 is reached, take the chicken out and either roll in the warmed sauce or pour over each piece. Take care to try to sauce gently so the rub stays in place.

Sauce:

1/2      cup        vegetable oil
3        cloves    garlic, chopped
2                     Shallots, chopped
1         tsp         kosher salt
1/2      cup        Canadian whiskey
1 1/2    Tbs        New Mexico chili powder
1 1/2     tsp        pepper
1/4       tsp        allspice
1/4       tsp        cloves
1/2      cup        brown sugar
1         cup        water
1         cup        ketchup
1/4      cup        molasses
1/4      cup        yellow mustard
1/4      cup        cider vinegar
1         tsp         hot sauce, franks
1/4      cup        apricot preserves

Saute onion, garlic, and salt in the oil over low heat until soft. Add whiskey, and reduce until no alcohol smell remains. Add chili powder, pepper, clove, and allspice. Cook for a couple minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to simmer, then low simmer for 35-40 minutes.

Add :
2       Tbs      butter
3/4    cup     brown sugar
3/4    cup     honey
1        Tbs     New Mexico chili powder
1        cup      chili sauce
1        Tbs    Texas pete buffalo sauce

Simmer for 10 more minutes and turn the heat off, then grate in on a microplane:

1/3       jalapeño
1/4       granny Smith apple for tart or gala or Fuji for sweet

Let cool so all the onion, garlic, jalapeño, and Apple have time to melt into the sauce. Strain with a fine mesh strainer. Adds shelf life, and makes a really smooth sauce.

Place the chicken back on the rack, and cook for another 5 minutes or until the sauce sets to your liking. The internal temp may have fallen at this point because they were out of the cooker, and the sauce may have been a little cooler than the chicken as well. They are usually perfectly done at this point though.

At the royal I rolled them in sauce one more time, but in hindsight I think it may have made them a little blotchy. So you could spray with Apple juice at this point just to shine them up, or go ahead and give them another saucing if you like.

[pmillen]

As an aside in this thread I thought that I would tell you that this is typical of the PMs and emails I've received from FMT.  He was an accomplished Fast Eddy pit user when I bought mine.  I would ask beginners questions of him and receive just this kind of detailed answer.

[pz]

All I can say is WOW

[Free Mr. Tony]

As an aside in this thread I thought that I would tell you that this is typical of the PMs and emails I've received from FMT.  He was an accomplished Fast Eddy pit user when I bought mine.  I would ask beginners questions of him and receive just this kind of detailed answer.

Thanks. I appreciate that. I try to be as detailed as possible when it makes sense to do so. That's why I like this format so much. After the issue arose about facebook on pelletheads, I created an account to do some "research". It was the same regurgitated information spouted off over and over again with short, thoughtless comments that added virtually nothing as far as gaining real knowledge.

Most (not all) in the groups that I joined wouldn't even bother to read the previous comments to see if they were just repeating what others had already said. So there may have been 250 responses to a question, but 175 were essentially identical. Because of the overall thoughtlessness of the information and ridiculously short attention spans of most of the contributors,  I left all the groups except the Hunsaker drum group that I originally signed up for.

[Kristin Meredith]

Thanks for this post.  Perfect as a tutorial and so generous in its sharing of experience and process.

[keithj69]

Thank you.

[Free Mr. Tony]

Thank you.

No problem. Obviously it's alot of steps, but really pretty simple after you do it a couple times. Using a bottled rub and sauce would cut alot of it out. I like to play around and create sometimes, so this was one of those times.