Crispy skin

[JaLink]

I am a beginner with my cooker. I am getting to the right internal temperature and the end product is tender, moist and tastes like it should. My difficulty with chicken and fish is that the skin is flabby and soft. How can I get it crispy. Thanks, J

[tkline01]

What I like to do is: Take the chicken parts and rinse them off, cut off excess fat, and then pat dry with paper towels. Put my favorite dry rub on and under the skin. Place the parts on a cookie sheet and loosely cover (you want air to get to the chicken) with foil. Place the covered cookie sheet in refrig over night. Letting them sit in refrig over night drys out the skin so when you cook you will get nice crispy skin!

[Porkchop]

how are you doing the chicken in the first place (cant speak for fish...)? are you "smoking" the chicken at low temps, roasting at high temps, what? the problem you describe sounds like a typical "smoked" slow cooked chicken problem.

my solution to this has always been to "smoke grill". what i do is start a fire with lump and hickory chunks, and set my drafts for 450 (lower draft daisy full open, damper top open 2 1/2 turns), and set up for an indirect cook.

when the grill gets up to 250, throw the chicken on the grate skin side down; there should be a fair amount of hickory smoke. leave it like that for like, 1/2 hour or so, then flip and let go til done and skin nice and crispy. you get the texture and flavor of slow smoked chicken and crispy skin too.

[JaLink]

chicken suggestion from Porkchop

The 1st chicken I cooked (on a can of Coors) I used smoke chips. The smoke flavor over powered the chicken flavors. The next chick also went on Coors and no smoke. I could now taste the chicken but lacked the skin crispnesss. Are you suggesting that I heat the cooker up to 450°, put the chick in for a half hour and then bring the temp down to 230° until I get the desired internal temp.

[Porkchop]

no.

if you are wanting crispy skin, i'd do away with the "beer can chicken" approach anyway. you wont need it. take a very basic approach. i generally do not do whole chickens, but cut them up into pieces. you could do this or spatchcock or roast whole on a stand. either way, if you go indirect 450 for an overall cooking time of about 45-hour, you will get good crispy skin and a moist bird.

typically, i like to have a little smoke flavor on top of that. normally, at high temps like that, you don't get much smoke. my suggestion was that, as the cooker STARTS to come up to temperature, put the chicken on when it hits 250 or so. this will give it some smoke. as the temp of the cooker continues to rise to 450, that smoke will lessen. you will get a lighter smoke flavor with the crispy skin.

but, if the smoke flavor doesn't appeal to you, just try it straight at 450.

[dub]

For Crispy Skin:

a. Chicken: finish lo-n-slo session with 450+F blast of heat for 3-10 minutes.

b. Fish: use lettuce leaves as 'disposable'("combustible") underlayment during 450-600F cook.

This'll getcha where ya need to be.

dub('nuff sed)

[JaLink]

Thanks for input

I am going to experiment with suggestions. To smoke up the whole topic, as part of my cancer therapy, I go to an ayurvedic Indian physician. His input was that high temperatures significantly reduce the nutrient value and that you shouldn't eat the skin anyway...toxins reside there as the barrier between the body and the environment. He is a Brahman Hindu and doesn't eat any kind of meat...so... but he sure has handled my chemo side effects. Again, thanks