Scraping chicken skin

[2Fat]

ya know if your chicken is so juicy when the judges take there 1st bite that it is running down their chin no one is thinking about the skin too much--just saying--------

 

[SteerCrazy]

I put the skins in my brine with the chicken then scrape after the brine. They seem to scrape a lot easier. We took 7th in chicken last year at our 2nd ever comp. I find scraping is a pain and have a new method that doesn't require scraping thankfully

 

[KC_Bobby]

So you're scraping them at the comp?

 

[SteerCrazy]

So you're scraping them at the comp?

Yeah, I trim at home and bring the trimmed chicken and skins to the comp. Have inspected then put them in the brine on site, scrape after brining.

 

[Uncle Buds BBQ]

I'll try with a duller knife

I use a throw away Bic razor. Helps me to get the right angle on the skin. Takes me about 2 hours to do 24 thighs and I cuss every #$% dang minute!

I hate chicken! :twisted:

 

[Jacked UP BBQ]

I just did thighes and ate them. They tasted gross like always because I hate thighes, but the skin and tenderness got 8's across the board from everyone. The skin was bite through and didn't trim anything or scrape anything.

 

[Burk504]

I have gotten pretty good at scraping the fat with a sharp knife but I HATE it! Takes all of the fun out of BBQ.

Does anyone share tips on bite through skin without scraping? I would be forever indebted to you!

 

[B C BBQ]

I have 8 thighs in the cooker right now. They came from Hannaford which means they are all different sizes and shapes and different skin thicknesses. That means I had to resize and I did scrape some of the fat off of the skin(not all). I much prefer the natural chickens I get for the restaurant. They are much more consistent and you can pretty much see the flesh through the skin.

We'll see how these turn out with rub I made and probably a dunk of a modified spicy sweet baby rays.

 

[repoman013]

boil them? i hear that works on ribs lol

 

[B C BBQ]

Other than the Hannaford sizing issues the chicken turned out great. Bite through tender skin on every bite, every piece(not a single piece pulled off the meat either. Pretty tasty chicken but I am still going to stick with the natural birds, unless I can find some thighs in packages of consistent sizes I can practice with.

I would post a picture but don't know how to do that.

 

[clk219th]

We just got into the KCBS competitions. We have only done one so far. The teams that won in chicken turned in chicken thighs that were deboned and skin scraped. We tried the skin scraping at a local competition this pat weekend. What a pain!!!!!!!! And, when we cooked our chicken, the skin shrank up and some of it fell off. Don't know if it's worth the effort if you wind up with skinless chicken thighs to turn in.

 

[Jeff_in_KC]

If you pull the skin totally off the thigh, you'll HAVE to pin them back on with toothpicks before cooking or that shrinking is gonna happen. Plus, the toothpicks allow the skin to stretch, thereby making it even thinner.

Oh and the razor thing, I'm tempted to call bullchit on that! One swipe and it's clogged up. I'd have to rinse and clean damned near between every stroke on the skin! Maybe that's why it took two hours to do! LOL!

I'm making it official to end the Lady Schick stuff... I no longer (at least not now) cut the fat off, partly because I'm using such high quality bird that it really doesn't require it. But when I did scrape fat, I basically filleted it off with a VERY sharp Japanese steak knife. Worked great! And slicing it off really does work better when the skin is cold. The method I used got us several first place bird turn-ins over the last three years. Maybe it was more the recipe but it worked great for us.

 

[bodcat]

I apologize for hijacking the thread, but what brand of chicken does everyone use? It all looks the same to me in the grocery store.

 

[Alexa RnQ]

We've used plain old multipack chicken from Costco.

 

[Woodreaux BBQ]

Sam's Pilgrim Pride. Not jacked up with broth.
I scrape skin and it does take a couple of hours. I go through 2 multi pack to get 12 comp chicken thighs. The rest we feed the crew and guests Friday night. Cheap and quick food along with some pit beef

 

[Podge]

Wow, this is rare... I actually agree with Scotty!:tea:!

The quality of the chicken makes a HUGE differance in how much you have to scrape.[/QUOTEt

that makes 3 of us

 

[RobKC]

I used to scrape, but no more. It would take a couple hours to prepare 12-16 thighs for a comp. Most of the time I use Smart Chicken from HyVee or Price Chopper. If Whole Foods has decent sized thighs, I'll use them.

 

[Jeff_in_KC]

I used to scrape, but no more. It would take a couple hours to prepare 12-16 thighs for a comp. Most of the time I use Smart Chicken from HyVee or Price Chopper. If Whole Foods has decent sized thighs, I'll use them.

And the Sugar Creek Chicken Champ should know, right? :clap2::clap2::clap2:

 

[markpmc]

Here are my thoughts. Scraping the skin is not much fun at all. I think we're all going through extra trouble to remove fat that will render during the cooking process IF we slow down and let it cook longer.

I went down this scraping path all last year and my scores were worse. I know that some are having success w/ this method, but remember the fat should render if you cook long enough.

Mark

 

[Dale P]

I use my dremel tool with a fine drum sander. Only takes 1 minutes per thigh.

Be careful and make sure you wear goggles, rain coat, and hip waders.

Or just fillet the fat off with a Rapala knife.