After last week's excellent chicken run I wanted to do it again. So I got 4.25lbs of drums and forgot there was only about half a basket full worth of Kingsford blue. Last week I used 3/4 basket full of KB and was able to do 2 batches of drumsticks that had a total cook time of 1 hr and 20 minutes( 2 30 min cooks and 20 min for coal to get ready). I figured since I was doing one batch, perhaps half basket should be good. The drumsticks were dry brined and rubbed with PBC all purpose rub Friday night. They sat out approx 2 hours before going in. I lit with fluid, waited 20 min, and then put the drummies in with the outside temp at 51 deg. The temp in cooker was around 298 and stayed around there the entire cook. It bumped up to about 337 after I cracked the lid when meat temp was around 150 deg. The chicken took about 13 min at that temp when I took them out at 168. They tasted wonderful but the skin wasn't very crispy or even edible to me.
So lesson learned. Bigg was absolutely right in that you must have your PBC HOT for chicken to come out with that beautiful crispy skin. Noah was right when he said make sure you use a full basket of charcoal. If you want to experiment and try saving some coal for shorter cooks, if using KB, one must use at minimum 3/4 basket!
I'm not really mad about it just chalk it up to getting in tune with the PBC and hopefully someone who reads this won't make the same mistake I made. Don't ask for pics....I was too irritated with myself to snap any
anyway happy sunday ya'll!
Jason