How To Get Bite Through Skin On Smoked Chicken

Smoked chicken thighs are an easy and Inexpensive way to feed a oversupply some great charcoal-broil.  The 1 thing you take to figure out though is how you are going to bargain with the pare.

• Exercise them incorrect one manner and the skin comes out like leather.
• Do them wrong another way and the skin comes out like rubber.
• Do them like they do in competitions and you will never want to cook thighs once again.

Hang with me here and I will prove you lot a SIMPLE way of smoking thighs that has succulent pare and will brand you excited to put these on your pit any fourth dimension a crowd needs feeding.

The Craven Skin Problem

Yous are never going to get crispy skin on a smoked chicken.  The temperatures that we will exist working with are just also low.

What you aim for with thighs is skin that is and then tender that you can cleanly bite through it.

The standard way of getting tender skin of thighs for a barbecue competition starts by peeling back the skin and scraping all of the fatty off the back of the peel until information technology is translucent.

Later the skin is scraped it is reapplied to the chicken and then the teams apply their secret rubs, injections, etc.

Scraping the skin is a miserable task and is the last matter yous volition desire to do if you are cooking a bunch of these for a crowd.

Hither is the piece of cake mode.

Prepare the Chicken Thighs for the Smoker

Start by brining the thighs for at least three hours.  I used the brine recipe for craven breasts for these thighs and let them soak for four hours in the refrigerator.

Chicken Brine Recipe

• 2 quarts water
• 1/2 loving cup table salt
• 1/4 loving cup brown carbohydrate.

Remove the thighs from the brine, pat dry out with paper towels and trim.  Flip the thigh then information technology is skin side down and trim the excess fat and skin away from the thighs.

After the thighs take been trimmed season liberally on both side with your favorite chicken rub.  If y'all don't have a adept craven rub then you lot can use this recipe.

Dry Rub for Chicken Thighs

• 1/2 loving cup turbinado sugar
• 2 Tablespoons seasoning salt (Lawry'due south)
• 1 Tablespoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon chile pulverization (Mexene)
• 1 teaspoon granulated onion

Here is where the play a trick on comes in!

Get a dispensable foil pan and add a tablespoon of Parkay or margarine for each thigh.

Place the chicken thighs, Skin SIDE DOWN, onto the Parkay.  I added a few extra dollops of Parkay for good measure 🙂

The Parkay is going to melt in the smoker and volition then render the fat from the chicken pare and make information technology incredibly tender.

Smoke the Thighs at 250F

Put the pan onto your smoker running at 250F.  I was using a Z Grills pellet grill and was burning a blend of hickory and apple for smoke.

When I was cooking these I went alee and put some other thighs directly onto the grate for a comparison test.

Permit the thighs smoke for an hour at 250F.  During this 60 minutes the skin is going to poach in the Parkay/margarine and get extremely tender.

Later on an hour remove the thighs from the pan and place them skin side upwards on your smoker grates.  The skin will look stake and most of the seasoning will have washed off.  That's okay, but hit the skin with a little more dry rub and you will exist good to go 🙂

Let the thighs melt until they hit an internal temperature of 175F, about another 45 minutes.

Once the thighs hit 175F I will glaze them with some charcoal-broil sauce and render them to the smoker for another 5-10 minutes so the sauce volition set.

My ideal final internal temperature for thighs is 180F which is about what I target for smoked craven legs and is nearly twenty degrees hotter than targeted for smoked chicken breasts.  Both sets of thighs finished at about the same time.  The foil pan does not speed up the cooking process.

So how did they plough out?

The thighs that were on the grate the entire time had a darker color since the rub had a better risk to form a crust.  I was pleased with the color of both versions.

The flavor on both versions were excellent with the foil pan thighs having a flake of a "buttery" note.

The pare on the foil pan thighs (left picture) was bite through tender and delicious.  The pare on the regular chicken (right picture) was tasty, rubbery and virtually completely came off on the first bite.

Give this recipe a endeavor; I call back you lot are going to love it!

Smoked Chicken Thighs with Bite Through Skin

Chicken thighs are brined before being smoked skin side downwards in a Parkay bath. The chicken pare becomes incredibly tender and the meat tastes astonishing.

Prep Time 30 mins

Melt Time one hr thirty mins

Full Time 2 hrs

Course Main Form

Cuisine American

• i quarts water Brine Ingredient
• ane/2 cup salt Alkali Ingredient
• one/4 cup brown sugar Alkali Ingredient
• 6 Craven thighs (Bone In, Skin On)
• 1/2 loving cup turbinado saccharide Dry Rub Ingredient
• 2 tbsp Lawry's Seasoned Common salt Dry Rub Ingredient (or Morton's Seasoned Salt)
• i tbsp black pepper Dry Rub Ingredient
• 1 tsp smoked paprika Dry Rub Ingredient
• one tsp republic of chile pulverization Dry Rub Ingredient
• one tsp granulated onion Dry Rub Ingredient
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce Sweet Baby Ray's
• 1/2 loving cup Parkay margarine

• Combine the alkali ingredients and stir to dissolve.

• Brine the chicken thighs in the refrigerator for 4 hours.

• Trim the thighs of backlog fatty and skin.

• Combine the dry rub ingredients, mix well and flavour both sides of the meat.

• Add the Parkay to an aluminum foil pan and identify the thighs skin side down into the pan.

• Smoke at 250F for 1 hour.

• Remove the thighs from the pan and place them pare side up on the smoker. Apply more dry out rub if desired.

• Smoke until an internal temperature of 170-185F and employ bbq sauce.

These smoked thighs are a great and easy way to feed a crowd.  Yous can load upward your pellet grill with several pans and manage them pretty easy.  Groovy side dishes would be a classic Cole slaw, baked beans and a creamy murphy salad.

Keyword Smoked Craven Thighs

Related Postal service

How to Smoke a Whole Craven

Source: https://www.bbqdryrubs.com/smoked-chicken-thighs/

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