Thread: Finally Made my First Muffin Pan Chicken

Today was the day to make Muffin Pan Chicken here. After watching what feels like 80 hours of YouTube videos of Competition Chicken & our local Walmart not being sold out of Chicken Thighs I made a run at cooking up a batch. I got a great flavor profile but the skin came out very tough. I don't know why. More research making smaller batches is needed I guess. They were melt in your mouth tender, flavor all the way thru, but tough skin. The Baked Mac & Cheese was certainly on time. Everyone liked the Thighs, I was surprised how they shrunk up too.

Originally Posted by speckfinder

Sure looks good, would you mind sharing the cook details?

So I allowed the thighs unpacked to warm up a bit after trimming the extra skin off the long side, the extra fat off the opposite side, and the oyster & extra skin off the top. That squared them right up on the corners. My muffin pans are coated, I put a pat of unsalted butter in the bottom of each cup along with a couple tablespoons of Swanson's Chicken Broth. Just seasoned this first batch with Tony's all around (no brine or injecting) and tucked a thigh into each cup. I didn't cut the ball off the bone either like a lot of cooks do in the videos. So I lit my smoker off with Match Lite but switched to pure pecan for the first 2 hours of the smoker burning. Once my heat was stabilized at 265 degrees with pecan wood only burning I put a loaded muffin pan on the 2 highest shelf's (Vertical Smoker in my other posts) and didn't open the door for 1 hour.

While the chicken was in the smoker I used about 1-1/2 cups of Bon Temp's Honey to a small bottle of a Carolina Hot BBQ sauce. Added enough Seasoned Rice Wine Vinegar 4% acidity to bring the tang back. I cooked this on the stove 30 minutes till time to "Dip" the thighs and place back in the smoker.

Once I set up a temporary table in front of the smoker for the dip I opened the door on the smoker removing one pan at a time and dipped each thigh completely then placed on the middle rack of the smoker. The one rack is large enough to hold all 16 thighs with room for the smoke between them. I closed the smoker back up (lost a lot of heat but it bounced right back) and let the thighs go for 30 more minutes while I added pecan limb wood (more bark than wood so it makes a stronger pecan smoke) which created a nice smoke to finish the thighs in. All though the thighs were in the smoker for 1-1/2 hours cooking they were lightly smoked thru the whole thigh, you could really taste the chicken. I am waiting this morning to see how much of the leftovers in the two refrigerators the grandchildren will take with them. That will dictate when I make some more. Both refrigerators are loaded up with food right now I can't make a small batch of anything, it will take us days to eat if the kids leave it.