Chicken and Turkey skin coming off the WSM way too dark?!?


 
J

Jimmy Gee

New member
I use a home made rub with no sugar and cook the poultry pretty hot 325 , but the skin comes out quite dark ! Any suggestions ?
 
cook the poultry pretty hot 325 , but the skin comes out quite dark
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Try reducing the cooking temp and taking a little longer.

I have cooked poultry at 325-350. Mine comes out fairly dark, but I'm fine with it.

Pellets and Pits YouTube channel just did a turkey cook to compare wet and dry brines. I noticed that his whole turkeys came out beautiful golden brown.

He cooked on a Weber pellet grill at a mere 250 degrees for a couple hours, then spritzed with oil and upped the grill to 350 when the turkeys were about 135. He says that it took about three hours with two turkeys on. He mentioned around the 12:00 mark that he usually cooks at 275, but he used the mixed cook temps to get a prettier, crispier skin.

You might try his approach if pretty skin is one of your goals.

 
Chris in Louisiana said:
Try reducing the cooking temp and taking a little longer.

I have cooked poultry at 325-350. Mine comes out fairly dark, but I'm fine with it.

Pellets and Pits YouTube channel just did a turkey cook to compare wet and dry brines. I noticed that his whole turkeys came out beautiful golden brown.

He cooked on a Weber pellet grill at a mere 250 degrees for a couple hours, then spritzed with oil and upped the grill to 350 when the turkeys were about 135. He says that it took about three hours with two turkeys on. He mentioned around the 12:00 mark that he usually cooks at 275, but he used the mixed cook temps to get a prettier, crispier skin.

You might try his approach if pretty skin is one of your goals.

Click to expand...
It would be interesting to know what type each turkey are, the left 1 looks to be more of a natural bird and the other has had some engineering on it to pop out the breast, our wild birds are built like the 1 on the left, tougher than shoe leather when baked :ROFLMAO: , I will slice breast against the grain about 3/8" thick and fry like chicken. Boil the rest for 3 days throw the meat away and use the stock lmao. legs have a lot of bones but the thighs turn out pretty good.
 
I’ve never cooked a bird in my wsm18.
I mean, is it even the right tool?
Apparently lots of people do it so I’m going to chalk this up to my ignorance.

I’ve had good luck with spinning or grilling turkeys and chicken on my performer.
The performer puts out perfect poultry skin every time if I do my job right.

The rubber skin thing would be my hesitation with using a wsm.
I’m also not partial to too much smoke on a bird but that’s just me.

About the dark skin,
I could be wrong but it sounds like to rich of a fire.
 
I would say make sure the top vent is running wide open. I had that problem early on but somehow change things up and I haven't been experiencing that anymore. I think it came down to have too much smoke wood burning at once... That and running it hotter and faster --- don't try to keep it at ~250 --- shoot for 300 minimum.

I had planned on smoking my bird on the WSM yesterday, but the 14 pound bird seemed too small to justify firing up the WSM so I ended up using the kettle instead. Somehow it knew I wasn't planning on eating it last night and it gave me the most perfect crispy skin I have ever had on a turkey!

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