Muffin pan chicken thighs

Kenny 13

I've been wanting to try cooking chicken thighs similar to Myron Mixon's technique using the muffin pan since reading Thirdeye's post about the perfect skin. I decided to try his technique of removing the skin and scraping off the fat, as well as deboning the thighs and removing as much fat as possible from the meat.

Preparation definitely is very labor intensive, so I'm going to have to work on a better way of scraping the fat off the back side of the skin. I used a paring knife, which worked pretty well but probably would have been better if the knife were a little sharper. I wish my son would have been home while I was prepping so I would have had another pair of hands to take some pictures of the prep and you could see the amount of fat removed. I had 5 thighs, and I easily removed more than a cup of fat between what was on the skin and what was attached to the meat.

Once the chicken was deboned & defatted, I put it in the fridge while I was prepping my maccaroni and getting the egg up to temperature. Once I had the egg stabilized at 350° I greased the muffin pan with some butter and put a small pat of butter in each "cup". I sprinkled the thigh meat with a good coat of hoochie mama and formed them into the shape that would fit into the muffin pan. Stretched a piece of the skin over each thigh, stuffed them into the pan making sure the edges of the skin tucked under them, sprinkled a little hoochie mama on the skin, and put a small pat of butter on top. Here's what they looked like ready for the grill:



I grilled on a raised direct setup on top of the adjustable rig for 20 minutes. This step was basically braising them in butter just until they set up where they would hold a uniform shape. This pic is about 15 minutes into the cook and they are starting to set up.




Once they firmmed up to where they would hold their shape, I removed them from the pan and put them on the grill skin side down for about 10 minutes to get the desired color to the skin. One of them was actually in a cooler spot on the grill so I had to let it go about 5 minutes longer before turning it skin side up.



At that point I let them cook until they were done and glazed them with some spicy peach sauce for the last few minutes of cooking. Even after removing all that fat, they cooked to 185° and were extremely moist on the inside. The great thing about this technique is that after deboning the thighs, you can season the meat well before shaping and putting the skin back on, so you can have lots of flavor through and through. Here they are plated with sides of maccaroni baked with onions, bell peppers, garlic, & corn, and some Texas Ranchero beans - the newest grillin' beans from Bush's.



This cook was a huge success. The skin on the chicken really did have a perfect bite-through texture. You could bite it or slice it without tearing off the rest of the skin. Also, extremely flavorful and moist. This was by far the best chicken I've ever cooked. I'll definitely keep doing this, but I'll need to work on a better way of removing the fat from the skin. That tool Thirdeye used looked pretty cool, but I haven't been able to find anything like that around here.

Hoss

VERY NICE!

Little Steven

Kenny,

Looks great! Scraping the fat paid off big time eh?

Steve

eenie meenie

That is labor intensive, but it sounds as if they were delicious. Very nice skin! It's hard to get pics when your hands are slathered in chicken fat, lol. Thanks for pics.

cookn biker

What a great venture you took on tonight! Looks super and thanks for posting!

Kenny 13

Thanks guys. Yeah, it is labor intensive but I would definitely say it paid off. One thing I did notice is that you would be surprised how hard you can scrape across the back side of chicken skin without tearing it. Probably took me 45 minutes to scrape the fat off 5 pieces of skin, but I'm confident I can cut that down significantly next time around just from having done it once.

hornhonk

Looks like all your effort was worth it. That is a fantastic looking plate of food.

EggerDan

Looks fantastic.

Great to see the creativity and sharing the pics.

I can normally see the chick fat, but did not realize it would be that much.

Daniel

thirdeye

Looking good man. You nailed that one for sure. It means a lot when someone else can duplicate a technique and get good results. You are right about that fat, it's gross, but think of it this way, you are removing a couple hundred calories from each thigh.




The scraping goes faster once you get the hang of it... and the scraper tool works twice as good as a knife.

They are called a "triangle paint scraper" and are sometimes called a "triangle molding scraper". I got mine at Home Depot.

Misippi Egger

Way to go, Kenny!

It REALLY is a lot of prep work. I couldn't find that 3-sided tool Thirdeye has, but I bought a paint scraper at Ace Hardware and it works pretty good.

Imagine this - we prepped 24 thighs for our comp in Slidell ! :woohoo: :woohoo:

They really cook good. Too much work for me for a home cook.

Kenny 13

Misippi Egger wrote:

Way to go, Kenny!

It REALLY is a lot of prep work. I couldn't find that 3-sided tool Thirdeye has, but I bought a paint scraper at Ace Hardware and it works pretty good.

Imagine this - we prepped 24 thighs for our comp in Slidell ! :woohoo: :woohoo:

They really cook good. Too much work for me for a home cook.

Yeah, I couldn't begin to imagine prepping 24 thighs like that. I still wish I would have known about that comp in Slidell, as I would have liked to check it out.

Kenny 13

Thirdeye, I looked for that tool at both Home Depot and Lowe's but didn't see anything that looked like that. I'm gonna keep searching, but if I don't find something suitable I am gonna try hitting my paring knife with a steel to see if that helps.

I do like the idea of ridding all those unnecessary fat calories from the thighs, and I didn't need the fat to keep the meat moist. I think this way of cooking them is a keeper for sure.

thirdeye

Maybe I need to corner the chicken skin scraper market. heheheeee.

The one area I haven't ventured into yet is injecting them. Not necessarily before the cook, but when they are about halfway done.

Kenny 13

Well I googled "triangle paint scraper" and a few showed up. I may just end up ordering one from one of those sites.

Misippi Egger

Wayne, I tried to inject them before cooking on my first try, but the meat was too thin for the large needle that comes with the injection solution. When their "wadded up" in balls, I'm afraid the injection would end up going between all the folds of meat.

The flavor brine did the most good for ours, but it does add considerable time to the prep - the brine, the rinse/wash and the long rest.

thirdeye

I was curious about that, that's good to know.

On chicken, I like the subtle flavor of brining over the possible overpowering flavors from marinating.

Kenny 13

I found that just using a good rub worked fantastic. Especially if you apply the rub before folding and shaping the thighs, as you then have the seasoning all the way through. You just have to be careful because you can overdo it.

Gator Bait

 
Great post Kenny.


Gator

 

vidalia1

I have done this technique twice now and you are right, the chicken is awesome cooked this way. It is a lot of trouble but well worth it.

bayouegger

Kenny13,

Those look great! I've done them too after reading Thirdeye's post! And just a side note, everything I've cooked off of Playing with Fire and Smoke has been incredible!! Great website for all the new people, incredible information!

Anyway, they came out great and I too competed in the Slidell comp but in the backyard division, took 4th in chix but there were only 13 teams. Missippi Egger and I have been emailing back and forth and I think his turned out better than ours.

There is a competition coming up May 1st in Covington, LA. It's their first one ever and since you live in Belle Chase it will be a short drive.

Are you going to the Gulf States Eggfest in Gulfport?

Steve

Kenny 13

bayouegger wrote:

Kenny13,

Those look great! I've done them too after reading Thirdeye's post! And just a side note, everything I've cooked off of Playing with Fire and Smoke has been incredible!! Great website for all the new people, incredible information!

Anyway, they came out great and I too competed in the Slidell comp but in the backyard division, took 4th in chix but there were only 13 teams. Missippi Egger and I have been emailing back and forth and I think his turned out better than ours.

There is a competition coming up May 1st in Covington, LA. It's their first one ever and since you live in Belle Chase it will be a short drive.

Are you going to the Gulf States Eggfest in Gulfport?

Steve

I'll have to keep the Covington comp in mind. My parents live in Hammond, so I get to the Northshore pretty often. Still don't know whether or not I'll be able to make Gulfport. My granddaughter's first birthday is May 6th but they have to schedule the party at a time when my son-in-law has a weekend off, and the Gulfport weekend is one of his few weekends off around that time. They still haven't locked in a date that's good for everyone, so it's leaving the eggfest in limbo for me.

Kenny 13

Just found out something worth trying on another forum. Someone who has used this technique tells me that it's easier to scrape the fat from the skin if you brine the meat and skin for a few hours first. I'm trying to find out if he leaves the skin on when brining, or if he brines the skin separated from the meat. Don't know if that would make a difference, but it sounds like it could be worth trying.

Big George's BBQ

That is some great looking chicken