Last night I cooked chicken again. I am trying a technique right now that works really well to tenderize the skin. What the judges are looking for is a "bite through" skin. From all the research on the internet and research I've done myself, high heat is the way to get this bite through skin. The last three times I've tried this I've used my homemade hickory charcoal and got the temperature in the grill up to about 500 degrees before putting the chicken on. Last night I was rushed and I only let the temp get to about 400 before putting it on. The temp was staying around 350 - 400 so I thought it would be ok. But when I took it off 45 minutes later the internal temp of the chicken was only around 165. While this is technically done it wasn't where I wanted it. It looked pretty good, but the internal temp was too low. So I decided to stoke the fire and put it back out there. I left it alone for about 10 - 15 minutes, when I went back the fire was at 550 and the chicken was black and crusty. Destroyed. Not a good night for me. I was very disappointed.
So about 9:00 I decided I had to try again Saturday. So I went to Publix got some more thighs and prepped them. I was cooking pork today anyway so I put the thighs on the smoker and then the grill. Once again I left them unattended for just a few minutes and sure enough they turned black again. This time only half of them were burned so I was able to try the others and they were pretty good. I still need to tweak my times by a few minutes, but I think I'm getting closer to where I want to be with the chicken.
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