Competition chicken help!?

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aimcat

Knows what a fatty is.
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So my husband and I are practicing for our first comp in July. We feel we are getting way better at mastering ribs pork and brisket but we tried our hand at chicken for the first time last night. Wow what a pain this is the prep work is a pain, trimming and getting the skin perfect. But I had an issue with the skin I had the skin pretty thin looking good but when cooking it pulled away and even on some shrank up. Some I tried toothpicks and some I didn't. Mixed results. What are we doing wrong? I also think maybe I should have gotten different thighs. Our pack were very inconsistent with some being small and some huge!
Are thighs the only thing we can do in competition? We are pretty good with whole chicken wings!?
 
Chicken is my kryptronite, so take this for what it's worth :-D

Here is what I do, and I rarely have skin that pulls back. I remove the skin, trim the thigh to size and shape (I find the smallest thigh in the batch and trim the others to that size). Then I lay out the skin, remove thick fat (filet it off or scrape if needed) and then lay a thigh on to the skin and trim the skin so there is about 1/2 inch of skin extra on the ends of the thigh and 3/4" to 1" on the meat sides. That way when you return the skin to the thigh it will wrap under the thigh a ways and that helps it not shrink.

As far as other types of chicken, thighs are by far the most common and seem to be the most common, but legs, breast or wings can do well, they just seem to be hit or miss. For wings, I would think that whole wings would be hard to fit into a box, but I have seen some nice boxe swith drummies, flats or a combo of both.
 
Try legs. Much easier trimming wise. I am not talking about the lolli-pop style. just regular ole drumsticks.
 
Legs sound easier also to me. I mean if we did legs, wings, etc? Are these all still ok for chicken turn in? Even in KCBS? Seems like all the big teams are doing thighs. I just thought they were a huge pain in the $%#! LOL!
 
aimcat said:
Legs sound easier also to me. I mean if we did legs, wings, etc? Are these all still ok for chicken turn in? Even in KCBS? Seems like all the big teams are doing thighs. I just thought they were a huge pain in the $%#! LOL!
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Yes, legs are a legal turn-in for a KCBS contest.
 
I hate thighs :mad2:. Never did good with thighs. I was never consistent. Switched to legs and did much better. I do the lollipops. Much less prep. NO scraping skin. Found out later that the skin on the legs and breasts is thinner than the skin on the thighs :shock:.
 
I tried legs. It was much easier and I desperately wanted them to do well but I won't do them again.

While I did well in one competition and with most judges in 3 contests, I received 2 comment cards regarding low scores for tenderness due to the ligaments/pin bones. If a judge gets that ligament and is unwilling to overlook it even though it is part of a chicken leg's anatomy, your scores will suffer. And if you are going to attempt to dig those ligaments out, you are better off scraping thighs.

As far as technique, RonL's advice is great.
 
Thighs are the "go to" meat for chicken because of the extra fat compared to breasts. Window of perfect doneness is larger.

I've thought of trying legs but haven't due to the ligament and pin bone issues

As for trimming, figure out how to skip the skin scraping and it will be much easier. We just square the thighs up when trimming and we are ready to roll. Also the brand we use doesn't have very thick skin. We searched around for a while until we found a consistent brand we liked.
 
Hold on a second. It takes 10 seconds to find the main ligament and cut it out. If they get the pin bone, they took the deepest bite possible. most judges don't. They take a little danty bite and move on.
 
Qbert60 said:
Hold on a second. It takes 10 seconds to find the main ligament and cut it out. If they get the pin bone, they took the deepest bite possible. most judges don't. They take a little danty bite and move on.
Click to expand...

Ya we pull the skin down and cut out that larger ligament and pop the smaller ligament on the other side just so it doesn't snap during cooking and put a hole in the skin. We aren't competing very much for it to matter, but we have scored some chicken wins with legs in the past. Takes about 10 seconds as mentioned to get them out. Maybe 20-30 seconds per leg total to do the minimal trimming needed.

I will admit that thighs overall still seem to be what is winning the most :-D.
 
I've never cooked anything but thighs. I'm not sure I could bring myself to cook legs right now! Thighs just work.
 
20 mins per leg to prep a decent lollipop. When we did lollipops I prepped 20 of them at 20 mins each one. I had 20 every time I practiced. It got old. The tendons and pin bone have to be removed. You leave them and you run a huge risk. You may or May not get hit. I never leave them. I switched to thighs this year for my sanity. At least what little sanity I have left lol but I may go back. 20 mins per leg is a bit tedious. They are amazing if you get it right. You accidentally pop the bone out and you start over. It seems like the meat tightens up around it but take a bite and chicken blob comes off. To be safe ditch the ones the bone comes out of.
I won't give away all my secrets for lollipops but I will say this imo if you don't remove the tendons and pin bone you are playing with fire. Grab a New clean pair of needle nose pliers and remove them. Otherwise imo stick to thighs.
I may go back to lollipops but I really don't enjoy lollipops. I enjoy eating them but I hate prep. Prep is the reason I am trying to get away from them. Thighs are less tedious.
 
I just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly.... you spend almost 7 hours prepping chicken lollipops? Not trying to be a jerk I just can't imagine prepping chicken that long. You deserve a metal for that alone! But I do some crazy stuff too to take a home a .25 ribbon so if it works for you then keep it up.


Rusty Kettle said:
20 mins per leg to prep a decent lollipop. When we did lollipops I prepped 20 of them at 20 mins each one. I had 20 every time I practiced. It got old. The tendons and pin bone have to be removed. You leave them and you run a huge risk. You may or May not get hit. I never leave them. I switched to thighs this year for my sanity. At least what little sanity I have left lol but I may go back. 20 mins per leg is a bit tedious. They are amazing if you get it right. You accidentally pop the bone out and you start over. It seems like the meat tightens up around it but take a bite and chicken blob comes off. To be safe ditch the ones the bone comes out of.
I won't give away all my secrets for lollipops but I will say this imo if you don't remove the tendons and pin bone you are playing with fire. Grab a New clean pair of needle nose pliers and remove them. Otherwise imo stick to thighs.
I may go back to lollipops but I really don't enjoy lollipops. I enjoy eating them but I hate prep. Prep is the reason I am trying to get away from them. Thighs are less tedious.
Click to expand...
 
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Scuffletown Smokers said:
I just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly.... you spend almost 7 hours prepping chicken lollipops?
Click to expand...

I don't anymore lol. Also I didn't do it all in one day either so keep that in mind.
I really liked the results and back when I cooked in the 14.5" WSM I needed 20.
Now I have two kids so you try spending that much time on chicken. It was easier when my oldest was younger and didn't move around much.
Partly why I am trying to move to a less labor intensive chicken thigh.
Chicken lollipops were an obsession at one point.
I use to cram 4 racks of ribs in a brinkmann rib rack. Cut out the best looking part of a rack and did it three more times. Smoked them for two hours and wrapped and then stuck my lollipops in the middle rack. The wrapped ribs reflected heat and the legs stood on end. I could get 20 legs in max if I stood them on end. Cutting off the knuckle on the meat side made it so I could stand them up. Back when I thought it was a great idea to cook in a 14.5" WSM. I had to think of every detail. How the meat had to be positioned to have good airflow. How to protect the ribs from over cooking. I wrapped 4 racks and stacked them when wrapped one right on top of the other. Whatever looked like the best 2 racks went in the middle and the other two were heat shields. If something went wrong where the middle racks were taking too long the outside racks were typically pretty good.
Anyways if you haven't noticed by now I am completely insane.
Once the kids are grown up a bit I May go back because I still like the results better.
Only reason I can share this is I don't do it anymore and it only works well in a 14.5" WSM. I had to rewrite my recipes this year so they would work.
I viewed it as a challenge and now I just want to relax and spend more time with the kids.
 
^ I don't even know where to start in responding to this :shock:

As for the OP, If you think you can make some excellent chicken wings then go for it. However know that you they need to look something like the pic below to have a shot. (Sorry about the huge size)

This is a shot of some wings Darren Warth turned in for his white meat entry to the jack in 2015

The-Jack-2015-03.jpg
 
I usually do alright in the yardbird end of things. Not sure if they have Fresh Markets in your area but if they do get whole leg quarters there. They are from Springer Mountain farms. I pull all the skin off then cut the thigh off and trim to size. Then take the skin and trim to size. When I'm done 3/4 of the skin on the thigh is leg skin. I buy the chicken by the case (usually 24-27 quarters) per case and they are very consistent in size. I set one Saturday in early spring and trim enough for the year. Granted I only cook 8 thighs per comp but there is a lot of pouting, crying and a general overall pitty party for me until I'm done.
 
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