Smoking Money has it in a torch help with skin at last minute. How it was explained to me at Myron's School is dont put it in the box if the taste and tenderness is not there even if it looks great. If you are mixing lollipops with thighs make sure appearance and taste of both are spot on. If your thighs are amazing but your lollipops aren't but look good you are actually hurting yourself in the score category so make sure they are both great. This actually happened to me in an FBA comp where I did Thighs and lollipops. Both looked great but tenderness in lollipops was off a little. Finished in the 20's in Chicken. two weeks later I did same thing but only did thighs in box and took 2nd. Now another option which I have done is doing Thighs and sliced breast meat. I did 3 thighs across the top and bottom of box and 1 on each side in middle leaving a perfect square in center. I sliced 8 pieces from the thickest part of the breast and put in that space looked really good and took 2nd on this as well. If you want to do multiple cuts cook plenty and design the box in your head based on all scenarios. You and your team taste everything and decide which is/are the best. If there are two that stand out put both in. If only one is amazing only use one. Where is the competition?
Hey Golfpro and guys above - thanks for the great insight. I'm pretty determined to go 100% pops in the box. 6 for sure, maybe 7 if I have enough good looking ones for the table runner.
I did another test run this past weekend, and things really turned out better. I had medium-crispy skin, great texture and flavor. You can see a pic below.
Method was to up my temp to 300-320, Hickory and Apple woods, full stick of butter in the pan. After about 2 hours, I glazed and finished them on the grate.
At the comp, I'll be more careful with the glaze getting on that bone, which was the extra layer of glaze done too sloppily because we were done and hungry. It also brushed off a little rub.
Best part was, my friends who had my last batch genuinely loved these.
The comp is in the middle of Illinois, in Mt. Carmel. There's a KCBS sanctioned comp going on, but I'm just doing the Backyard - which is this Saturday!
