- Hey, I'm chef Tom with
All Things Barbecue and today I wanna walk you
through how to prepare competition style chicken thighs. (splash) (dripping) (splash) Let's start with trimming the thighs. The first thing we'll do is remove the skin completely from the thigh. These skins can have a lot
of fat on the backside of 'em which will negatively
affect the bite through of that skin and the finished product. So we'll be slicing this skin from the bottom side with a very sharp knife. This Victorinox boning
knife is perfect for the job because it's flexible and
fine enough to get in there. Now we'll trim any excess
fat from the thigh itself. In order to get these things
as uniform as possible, and we want all of 'em to be
about the same size and shape, we're going to cut this
knuckle bone off of this side. That'll make sure that our
meat can wrap around completely without altering the shape of the thigh. With competition chicken, it's
really important that all of your thighs are as evenly
sized and shaped as possible. The very first thing that the
judge is going to grade you on is what that chicken
looks like in the box. Alright, next we're going
to inject the thighs. We've mixed up some of the
Butcher BBQ Bird Booster chipotle injection with some water
and we're just gonna pick a few spots around this thigh to inject. We'll do this with each thigh and then place them in a zip-top
bag and pour the remaining injection mixture in
the bag with the thighs. (liquid pouring) Now throw those in the fridge
and let 'em soak for an hour. We'll be cooking our chicken today on a Yoder Smokers YS640 Pellet Cooker set up for indirect grilling and we'll be cooking at 275 degrees. (bag crinkling) Now let's get these thighs seasoned up. (paper rustling) We'll apply the rub to all
of the surfaces of the meat. We also want to give a light
dusting to the backside of the skin, that's the side of the skin that's going to be touching the meat. With the meat seasoned
we can begin to wrap the thighs back in their skins. You want your skin to cover
all of the flesh and any excess you can tuck underneath the thigh. Consistency is key. It's all about the presentation. With our skins back in
place now we'll give another light dusting of the Plowboys
Yardbird on top of the skin. I wanna prepare the pan by
putting some Butcher BBQ chipotle grilling oil in the bottom and spreading it around Now we'll carefully
transfer our thighs, keeping those skins in place into the pan. As the juice and the fat
renders out of the thighs while they cook, it's going
to mix with this grilling oil and kind of incorporate
some of that buttery, fatty, delicious chipotle flavor
into those thighs as well. We're gonna cook them
uncovered for 30 minutes. Open cooking the chicken
for this initial 30 minutes is going to serve a couple of purposes. One being that this is our
time to get some smoke into that chicken and the other that
we're going to develop some color and some flavor and
some texture on the outside. After the initial half hour
we'll take the pan off, wrap it in foil and put
it back into the cooker. (foil crumpling) The foil allows us to trap some
of that moisture in the pan as well as providing even
cooking for all of those thighs. As the thighs come up to temp, we'll mix and warm our sauce. We're mixing together a cup
of Plowboys Sweet 180 and a cup of Firebug grilling sauce hot. We'll add to that a half
cup of wildflower honey. While we don't want to cook
our sauce down, we're just looking to heat it up
enough so that when it hits the chicken it's not gonna slow the cooking process. The next thing we'll be
looking for is an internal temperature of a 150 degrees. Meanwhile, what's going on
in there is we trapped a lot moisture inside that pan,
that moisture is getting into that meat and that meat's
cooking nice and evenly. When the internal temperature
reaches 150 degrees it's time for us to sauce. Well, certainly there's
different techniques for how you would apply
your sauce to your chicken. What we're going to do is
we're going to actually dip the chicken thighs into the sauce. We wanna be able to
completely submerge 'em and that way we don't get any
brush strokes on the top. (meat sizzling) Now after dipping the thighs
into the sauce you wanna transfer it to a wire rack. The wire rack's gonna allow
the sauce to drip off and not pool at the bottom of the chicken thigh. Now there's one last finishing
touch we wanna add to these thighs and that's JP's Chicken
Scratch Finishing Spice. I'm not gonna trust the shaker to get this stuff on here evenly. One false move and you've got a giant pile of finishing dust
on your competition thighs and nobody wants to bite into that. I'll remove it from the shaker
and sprinkle it on by hand. Continue cooking until you reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees. (foil crumpling) Alright, your chicken's at 160 degrees. You're finished cooking it. It's time to bring it
inside, or to the trailer, wherever you may be and throw
into a Cambro or a cooler to try and keep that temperature
consistent, to try and keep it right where you want it when you serve it to the judge, because it may not quite be time to throw those in the box yet. Now if you're just getting
into this competition thing you're gonna find for yourself that as important in consistency
is adaptability. You're gonna learn what
works for you and you're gonna learn what the judges like. It's your job to apply
those lessons to your food. Now there are a few
things that we can count on from the judges every time. One of those being that
you've got to make the best impression with your
food in a single bite. And you might be lookin'
at this recipe and going, there's seven ingredients in here. Why do I need all that flavor,
and that's because you've got one chance to let that
judge know that this is the best chicken he's tasting today and the reason is big flavor. Another thing the judge
is going to be looking for is bite through skin. Most of the time these
guys pick this thigh up, they take a single bite
and if that skin pulls off the thigh with the
bite, you're in trouble. And that's the main reason
why we've taken the time to slice that fat off the
bottom side of the skin. What you see here is a
perfectly clean bite through. And that's what we're lookin' for. I hope we've helped up your
guy's chicken game today, good luck on all your future comps and thanks so much for watchin'. If you guys enjoyed the video,
please click that subscribe button and if you have any
questions or comments or there's anything you'd like to see
me cook, let me know in the comment section down below. For more recipes, tips and
techniques you can head over to thesauce.atbbq.com. All Things Barbecue, where
barbecue legends are made
