Chicken On A Traeger

[retiredbadge]

I am about to put some chicken thighs in my Traeger again. How do you get the skin crispy? I have tried many different things and nothing gives me the “bite through skin” that everyone raves about.

 

[troutman]

Very dry skin and high heat have always done the trick for me.

 

[retiredbadge]

Very dry skin and high heat have always done the trick for me.

Do you sauce the chicken and if you do when?

 

[troutman]

I personally don't. We like our chicken crispy skinned. I always have sauce on the side for those who want it. If you do want to sauce, don't do it until the skin has crisped up on you. Otherwise it will stay soggy.

 

[retiredbadge]

Sounds like a plan.

How does about 300 degrees sound?

 

[yahoot]

Chicken skin requires relatively high heat to crisp up (it has to render out and basically fry).

I brine my chicken and put olive oil in my brine (so it picks up oil as I take it out of the brine bucket).
If I don't have time to brine, I rub chicken with olive oil (helps the skin crisp instead of drying out, plus it gives the kosher salt something to stick to), but often chicken has enough fat to crisp up in its own grease.
Olive oil is an old restaurant habit - you get more consistent results.

On a pellet grill, you can smoke low-and-slow, then crank up the heat at the end for a few minutes to crisp it up. you can also put the chicken pieces on the BBQ or under the broiler to crisp them up. Once, for a remote event where my BBQ didn't arrive, I crisped chicken up with a propane torch after it came off the smoker. Couldn't tell the difference, except it was a slow process.

 

[yahoot]

300 is OK. I use 350. Once you get a traeger above about 250, you aren't getting any real smoke flavor, so you are just trying to grill the chicken skin quickly before the meat dries out.

 

[retiredbadge]

300 is OK. I use 350. Once you get a traeger above about 250, you aren't getting any real smoke flavor, so you are just trying to grill the chicken skin quickly before the meat dries out.

I have noticed that before. I did put in a AmazN tube for the smoke.

 

[flatbroke]

I never could get crispy chicken on my traeger.

 

[mike243]

I split whole chickens and season then 350 and skin gets crispy,if adding sauce skin may stay rubbery if not already crisp,20 min on smoke to start puts enuf smoke for me and maybe a little to much for wife these days,I'm a fan of sauce on the side for all meats and rarely sauce any thing