Hi there and welcome!
I would run the MES at full blast. As for water pan I'm not sure, but most of my reading on this forum of MES smokes always go empty water pan or no water pan at all.
As for rub. I say yes but
leave out the salt or add only a little bit of salt separately. The skin doesn't seem to retain much if any salt but the meat sure will so add salt according to this info and your tastes :)
Also you may want to put a foil drip pan under the chicken or foil up the MES drip pan because the skin will leak fluids. I use a drip right under the chicken to catch the juices so I don't get a mess in my smoker and so that overall cleaning is a breeze.
R2 Builder is correct. With chicken and turkey your skin will cook and have great flavor BUT will be rubbery or leathery. This is because the skin needs a higher temp to change to a desireable texture. I've been trying to solve this with my MES and as we speak I have a 5.5 pound chicken smoking SPECIFICALLY to work on this issue.
My plan is to heavily smoke 2 hours with my A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker (
AMNPS) burning from both ends for 2 hours to an Internal Temperature (IT) of 125F degrees. Then I'm going to transfer the chicken (rack, drip pan and all) to the oven at 325F for an hour and hope it hits an IT of 165 in that time. With this smoke and cook I will get an idea on what IT I need to go to in the smoker and if 1 hour at 325F in the oven will do the trick and get to 165F without quickly overshooting.
Again, all of this experimenting because I am trying to figure out a way to get acceptable skin on poultry. So far the MES has been incapable of doing so, my quick oven broil approach has been weak and has failed, and attempting to crisp with a propane torch didn't do the trick either.
I'll report back in a few hours with my findings and I'll be sure to update you. Best of luck with your smoke! :)
