Lazy Crock-Pot Barbecue

Whole Chicken Saga, Part III

Are you impressed? I said I would make a post, and then I actually wrote it! And posted it!

In case you couldn’t guess, despite the travesty that was chicken disassembly, my crock-pot barbecue turned out swimmingly – and it was delicious, too! (Okay, that’s a pun that’s wasted on you right now, but you’ll get it in a minute.) As I promised, this is a totally lazy recipe, if you can get past the raw chicken, or if you’re smart enough to have bought your chicken prepackaged and ready to cook. I didn’t even make my own barbecue sauce, I just picked my favorites at the store.

It really is this easy.  Put everything in the crock-pot, turn it on, and leave it for 8 hours.

Come back 8 hours later and pour off the incredibly watery barbecue sauce (I forgot to take a picture of that, but the chicken really does just let loose in there, so you have to either pour it off or find a way to thicken it), then shred the chicken, add more sauce, and cook a little bit longer just to heat up the new sauce.

The recipes I read to prepare myself for making up my own mentioned two recurring problems: water sauce (true, solvable) and dry chicken (false – all of the chicken was cooked perfectly, nothing dry, nothing overcooked; might be true if you only used chicken breasts).  If you are going to use prepackaged chicken, I would recommend using a variety of parts, not just breasts, so that you get some of the fat in there.  I did skin all of my chicken, and pull off all of the fat I could get to, but apparently what I left was enough to balance it out.

I tried to make cucumber slaw to go with ours, since we have an overabundance of cucumbers.  There wasn’t a real recipe on the internet (what?!?!?) so I made one up – shredded cucumbers, plain yogurt, and sour cream.  The flavor came out really well, but the cucumbers were just too juicy to make a good slaw, even after I pressed them into a strainer.  Have to work on that…

Doesn’t it look delicious?

Ingredients:

• One whole chicken, cut into pieces, or a bunch of chicken parts
• 1-2 bottles of barbecue sauce, your preference (I used Stubbs mild, Stubbs Sweet Heat, and some other kind of Honey BBQ)

Directions:

1. Pour a thin layer of  barbecue sauce into the bottom of the crock-pot.
2. Put chicken in crock-pot.
3. Pour more barbecue sauce on top to cover the chicken.
4. Set crock-pot to cook on low for 8 hours.
5. 8 hours later… pour out excess watery barbecue sauce and add more barbecue sauce from the bottle.
6. Shred the chicken (it should essentially fall off the bone at this point – just be careful that the little bones don’t fall off with it!) and put it back in the pot.
7. Stir and continue to cook for 30 minutes (or just stir and eat right then, if you’re super hungry).
8. Serve on buns with slaw and more barbecue sauce.