Another Chicken Thighs ala Thirdeye

We had a whole tray of chicken thighs that needed to be cooked and I thought I'd give Thirdeye's method a try.

http://playingwithfireandsmoke.blogspot.com/1997/05/perfect-thigh-work-in-progress.html

I gotta say that scraping the fat off the skins was perhaps the biggest pain in the ass food prep activity I've yet to tackle. After about my 6th one, I finally began to catch on to a technique that worked. I didn't have the triangular paint scraper tool that Thirdeye recommends, so I went through a variety of knives with different blade sytles before I finally settled on a chopping knife with a very straight cutting edge. I did not de-bone them.

So FINALLY when the fat scraping was done, I seasoned the thighs with a combination of DP Shaking the Tree and Tsunami Spin. I reapplied the skins, and I found that it's really not necessary to to hold them in place with a toothpick. I toothpicked some, others, just laid the skin back on and they all held just fine.

Cooked them per Thirdeye's instructions, raised, between 250-275. While I'm sure these weren't competition ready, they were pretty darn good. You could take a bite of the thigh without the rest of the skin sliding off and without getting a mouthful of fat.

All said and done, it was worth the effort. Figuring out your scraping technique and having the right tools is probably key. Next time I do this, I will probably be able to prep the skins about half the time.