I saw some older posts of people using butter soaked cheese cloth to help brown & crisp chicken skin, is this really effective? I's smoking a chicken today and was thinking of trying it.Cooking at 300f in my 025 ...
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Yes. It does help. It also keeps the chicken from getting real dark since it's exposed for a shorter period of time.
The skin will be better and edible, but true crispy only happens at 375* or so. Try it.
The skin will be better and edible, but true crispy only happens at 375* or so. Try it.
tried, skin still wasn't crisp. Best chicken I ever had however. Maybe next time I'll remove the skin altogether... not healthy anyway 
I made chicken thighs last night. Set my 025 at 300 and let it preheat. I placed 8 thighs sprinkled with CS chicken rub in. Smoked using apple chips 2oz for 45 minutes. Pulled and placed in a pan and put into an oven set at 375 with the convection turned on. Pulled after 30 min. The skins were crisp and the meat was delicious and juicy. Easy and quick and great results.
The cheese cloth/butter is primarily for two things. Keep the chicken from getting too dark and adding butter to the skin. But you have to take it off near the end for it to let the skin crisp up.
Chicken skin crispness is all about the fat rendering. Won't happen:
1) at lower temps
2) if the humidity is too high
3) if it sits too long after cooking
The easies is Padre's solution, just finish on a grill or directly to crisp it up.
The other is to dump some of the humidity. The smoke does sometimes TOO great a job with the humidity.
Try some techniques.
I've found over the years, most people don't even eat the skin (but I do) so we'll do skin off sometimes and skin on others.
Chicken skin crispness is all about the fat rendering. Won't happen:
1) at lower temps
2) if the humidity is too high
3) if it sits too long after cooking
The easies is Padre's solution, just finish on a grill or directly to crisp it up.
The other is to dump some of the humidity. The smoke does sometimes TOO great a job with the humidity.
Try some techniques.
I've found over the years, most people don't even eat the skin (but I do) so we'll do skin off sometimes and skin on others.