| Perfect
Chicken Skin
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Originally
posted: 09/01/2002
Last updated:
08/07/2008 |
Summary
- Brine the chicken for
4 hours, then let it air-dry in the refrigerator for 4 hours.
- Use 1 to 1-1/2
chimneys of fully lit Kingsford charcoal briquettes.
- Place the foil-lined
water pan in the cooker, but leave it empty.
- Roast chicken
skin-side up at 300°F for 1 hour.
- Baste with sauce just
before the chicken is done.
- Remove chicken from
cooker, cover loosely with
foil, and let rest for 10 minutes before serving.
After several years of
cooking chicken in many different ways using the Weber Smokey Mountain
Cooker, I have reluctantly come to this conclusion:
I
cannot smoke a chicken "low and slow" at 225°F and get
skin that's worth eating.
I can get moist meat. I can get flavorful meat.
I can get beautiful skin that looks
delicious. But all too often, the skin is soft and rubbery, especially on
the breast and thigh. This is one
of the biggest complaints that people have about barbecued chicken.
What I've learned is that
the problem
has to do with the cooking temperature. Chicken skin has a
thin layer of fat under it, and when it's cooked at high temperature, the
fat sautés the skin. When cooking at "low and
slow" barbecue
temperatures, however, this fat just melts away without getting hot enough to
sauté the skin.
In the Kiawe
Chicken - Brined In Hawaiian Sea Salt topic, I tried crisping the chicken directly over the hot coals at the
end of cooking. This works to some extent, but since the fat has already been
rendered, it's not available to help sauté the skin.
The best way to achieve chicken skin that's worth eating is to cook the chicken at a higher temperature,
especially toward the beginning of the cooking process. Here are some photos I
took on July 13 and July 20, 2002 when I cooked high-temp chicken on the
Weber Bullet.
As
always...click on any of the pictures to
view a larger image.
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Preparing And
Brining The Chicken The
day before I planned to barbecue, I bought a 3.83 pound range-fed
chicken at the grocery store and prepped it according to the How
To Butterfly A Chicken page. I cut the butterflied chicken
into halves and soaked them in a brine solution in the refrigerator
for 4 hours (Picture 1). The brining process adds flavor to the meat
and keeps the chicken moist during high-temp roasting, even if
slightly overcooked.
Brine
For High-Temp Chicken
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1
gallon cold water
1 cup Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
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1/2
cup sugar
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Combine
ingredients in a non-reactive container, mixing thoroughly to
dissolve salt and sugar. Makes enough brine for a 3-4 pound chicken.
Substitute 3/4 cup Morton Kosher Salt or 1/2 cup table salt for
Diamond Crystal.
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After brining, I
moved the chicken into a Ziploc bag and stored it overnight in the
refrigerator. (This is not a required step; proceed directly
to the next step, if time permits.)
The next morning, I
dried the chicken halves thoroughly using paper towels and placed them
on a rack over a baking sheet. The chicken went back into the
refrigerator uncovered to air-dry for 4 hours. This step removes some
of the moisture from the skin so it will crisp better during cooking.
Picture 2 shows how the chicken looked after air-drying.
Next, I
pulled the chicken from the fridge and applied Smokin' Guns
BBQ Rub
generously to both sides, then let it sit at room temperature for 1
hour as I prepared the Weber Bullet.
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Running The
WSM Wide Open
I lit a full chimney
of Kingsford charcoal briquettes and spread them evenly over the
charcoal grate when they were hot. I placed three large
chunks of dry apple wood on the hot coals and assembled the cooker. I
put the foil-lined water pan in place, but left it empty.
I set the top vent
and the 3 bottom vents wide open and left them that way through the
entire cook.
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Details Of The
Cooking Session
I cooked the chicken
skin-side up for 1 hour at 300°F, until it reached 160°F in the
breast. I did not turn the chicken during cooking and I basted it once
with a tomato-based barbecue sauce at the 45 minute mark.
Here's how the temps
and vent settings went during the cooking session.
| Time |
Lid
Temp |
Vent 1
% |
Vent 2
% |
Vent 3
% |
| 2:00pm |
- |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| 2:10pm |
295 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| 2:20pm |
295 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| 2:30pm |
300 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| 2:40pm |
303 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| 2:45pm(b) |
303 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
| 3:00pm |
307 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
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(b)
basted with barbecue sauce
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Note
that the vent percentages represent the way I set the vents at the
time indicated.
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Mission
Accomplished!
After just 1 hour,
the chicken was done. This picture shows the finished product. It had
a beautiful mahogany color and looked very appetizing. I moved the
chicken to a pan and covered loosely with foil for a 10 minute rest
before serving.
The chicken was
tender, as expected, and thanks to the brine, the meat was moist and nicely
seasoned. As for the skin, my cooking log says it
all: "Skin worth eating!"
On another occasion,
I cooked this same recipe at 350-360°F using 1-1/2 chimneys of fully
lit Kingsford charcoal. The results were quite good, and the cooking
time was reduced by perhaps 15 minutes.
If you're really
daring, you can remove the water pan and start the chicken skin-side
down for 15-20 minutes, then turn it over and finish cooking. This
will give you skin that's really crispy...but be careful not to burn
it!
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