Chicken skin burning up on the mini


 
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Dave Calvery

New member
I like the idea of using the mini for cooking competition chicken but the skin on my chicken keeps getting burned up (and off). The skin on the drumsticks literally falls off the rest of the skin becomes dark an unappealing. I add a charcoal ring and three wsm vents to the bottom section and have able to keep the temp at about 325 to 350 during the cook.

I normally cook on an 18.5 at the same temperature and have no such problems with my skin.

I use a 12 inch pizza pan for a heat diffuser and my top grate is 4 inches from the top. Could my problem simply be that the physics of the mini create an unavoidable hot spot above the grate or is there something I can do to change to heat flow in my mini?

thanks,
Dave
 
Wow, sorry to hear about the issues you're having with the mini. I have the same setup, but a 12" pie pan in place of your 12" pizza pan. I just bought a couple of 12" pizza pans, they were $6 less than the pie pan so I thought I'd give them a try. I'll give it a try later this week and see if there is a difference.
A couple questions though; is the vent in lid the fully open, where is the thermometer located, and what charcoal are you using? This may help narrow down why skin burning is occurring.

Chad
 
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then yer cooking at to high a temp and probably to long. where and with what are you checking the temps with ? check the gauges and then check the grate temp. once you know the grate temp then you have something to compare to.
 
George Curtis said:
then yer cooking at to high a temp and probably to long. where and with what are you checking the temps with ? check the gauges and then check the grate temp. once you know the grate temp then you have something to compare to.
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I have a temp gauge mounted below the grate and am cooking the chicken to 165 - checked with a thermapen. Cook time is about one hour, the same as cooking time on the 18.5 wsm.

Thought about trying ceramic dish as a heat diffuser to see if that makes a difference. The chicken has good flavor but looks awful.

Dave
 
i asked what the grate temp is. thats where the chicken is cooked at. you might be surprised what the temp is there. lets face it, burt chicken means to much heat.
 
follow up chicken cooking results

Dave Calvery said:
good point George. I'll check that out during my next cook.
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I dropped a wired thermometer on the grate and saw that the temp was considerably hotter that the mounted thermometer that was 2 inches below the grate. Instead of trying to cook at a lower temperature I opted to cook my chicken in an aluminum pan to change the dynamics of the heat flow.
That worked fine but I ended up with rubbery skin instead of burnt skin.

During my second test today I untrayed the chicken and put it directly on the grate when it reached an internal temp of 145. That improved the skin texture. I think I have found a workable process and am planning to try it out in competition at the Chilly Chili BBQ cook off in Austin, TX this weekend. Wish me luck.

Dave
 
luck ! i've watched a lot of shows, etc and it seems most take the skin off, scrape the underlayer fat of and then put the skin back on. also make sure the skin is dry.
 
Yeah, I have had some success with scraping skin fat but it is challenging in the Texas cook offs since we are required to turn in a full half chicken. Also, I sometimes puncture the fatty parts of the skin with toothpick so more fat will render during cooking. Fortunately, a lot of judges here just bypass the skin and go straight for the breast or dark meat.

Dave
 
Dave Calvery said:
I dropped a wired thermometer on the grate and saw that the temp was considerably hotter that the mounted thermometer that was 2 inches below the grate. Instead of trying to cook at a lower temperature I opted to cook my chicken in an aluminum pan to change the dynamics of the heat flow.
That worked fine but I ended up with rubbery skin instead of burnt skin.

During my second test today I untrayed the chicken and put it directly on the grate when it reached an internal temp of 145. That improved the skin texture. I think I have found a workable process and am planning to try it out in competition at the Chilly Chili BBQ cook off in Austin, TX this weekend. Wish me luck.

Dave
Click to expand...

Well I bombed at Chilly Chili but tried again this weekend at a cook off in Irving and got third place chicken of 77 teams. Not too shabby. I cooked in a restaurant style aluminum pan except for 5 minutes of saucing directly on the grill. It gave me some pleasure to beat the teams who cooked their chickens on their elaborate pits that cost $10K or more.
 
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