Trimming Thighs

[Fatback Joe]

Originally Posted by The Pickled Pig

I have interchanged skins before w/o a problem. However, if you trim the thigh down to a small enough size, it's own skin will easily wrap around it.

I do the same thing. Last comp when I brined my thighs every piece of skin came off the thighs so when I removed them from the brine I had to wrap each and every thigh and I am sure only a small % if any got their original skin..........it was good for 9th and I don't think the intermingled skin was a factor. LOL All the thighs were cut down to a uniform size/shape so it didn't matter a bit.

[Plowboy]

Originally Posted by timzcardz

Having never done this, a thought does come to mind. So I'll offer up what may possibly be a silly question.

Could you take the skin off of a thigh, and then completely wrap the thigh in the larger skin from a breast thereby leaving a very neat piece with the only edges of skin being on the underside?

Interesting idea. Kind of overkill and unnecessary, IMHO. However, very creative and doable.

Originally Posted by SmokeInDaEye

Wouldn't the whole giant piece of skin come off with the first bite? I would think you'd want to have the skin somewhat connected to the meat but I'm a member of the 13th place chicken club so what do I know?

Not going to come off with first bite if it isn't 100% rubber. I remove the skin completely when I prep. Just easier that way, and I like to get rub on the actual chicken, too.

I stop short of getting the Lady Schick razor out.

[BBQ_Mayor]

Originally Posted by Plowboy

I stop short of getting the Lady Schick razor out.

Thats for your chicken, right?

[Plowboy]

Originally Posted by BBQ_Mayor

Thats for your chicken, right?

Not for MY chicken.

[Dale P]

All of these ideas are fine with me but it seems the poor ol pork butt is getting held back.

Try this:
We brine our chicken skin in seperate containers from the meat. Chicken in salted Sun Drop and the skin we marinate in Blueberry vinegar.


Anybody want to buy a bridge?

[Scottie]

What a waste of a perfectly good mixer for Jack Daniel's....

[KC_Bobby]

I was hoping this thread would energize me for my thigh trimming ... it didn't, but I still need to do it tonight because I'm driving to IA tomorrow night.

Off to trimming I go.

[Gowan]

Originally Posted by timzcardz

Having never done this, a thought does come to mind. So I'll offer up what may possibly be a silly question.

Could you take the skin off of a thigh, and then completely wrap the thigh in the larger skin from a breast thereby leaving a very neat piece with the only edges of skin being on the underside?

I've tried this with thighs as well as breasts - basically removing the largest possible sheet of skin ala Silence of the Lambs. It worked alright, but the results weren't good enough to justify all the extra work and waste.

It's great that you're thinking like this though. That's how new techniques come to be discovered. My advice is when you come up with a new and crazy concept go ahead and experiment yourself and see if it works. Once you post the idea on a forum the cat's out of the bag and the next guy over might start using your "secret" technique to beat you to the stage!

[Alexa RnQ]

A cautionary tale: We normally trim thighs before we leave for a comp, put them in Foodsaver bags and keep them iced down.

Running short of time before Modesto, we just flung the packages from Costco into the cooler, figuring we'd have time to trim after setup. They were those multipacks with three thighs in each smaller sealed pouch.

Setup didn't run any better for time after such a long trip, and there we were in the dark opening packages of thighs. About the second package I opened was RANK. I mean, it purely stank even though it was within the freshness date.

By the time we realized that about every other package was spoiled, I was starting to panic. We were very, very lucky that some of the pieces that weren't spoiled were good ones that gave us a lot to work with, but if they'd been mostly weedy ones we'd have been screwed. As it was, I had to pick and scrape to get together the number of thighs we'd normally cook.

We've sworn that we'll never get left out in the field without recourse again.

[BBQNUTT]

Originally Posted by billm

similar to what the pictures above show..we actually remove the skin then cut the "oyster" out , trim up the sides then wrap skin back on. All the peices look uniform and look great in the box. As far as it looking obvious im not sure what you mean.

What part of the thigh are you calling the "oyster"? I trim my thighs very little other than the extra long pieces of skin. I am curious to know what the "oyster" is so I can try trimming it off.