BBQ Slow Cooked Pulled Chicken (Part II)

And now for Part II of the BBQ Pulled Chicken post. As you may have read, yesterday I wrote about preparing the chicken and pulling it apart. Today's post will focus on making the BBQ sauce and a short discussion of different ways to use it.

The BBQ sauce I prepared came from Bobby Flay's cookbook. It was tasty, but I will add more sugar/honey the next time I make it. Rather than rip Bobby's sauce from his cookbook and copying into this post, I will explain the basic components of the BBQ sauce.

A typical BBQ sauce will have pureed tomatoes, onions, chili powder, honey, brown sugar, dry mustard, garlic, ketchup (or tomato paste), and Worcheshire sauce. Bobby's included molasses and chipotles in adobo (both of which I plan on experimenting with in the future). Basically, you start by dicing onions and then sautéing them until they are soft (about 5 minutes). You then add pureed tomatoes and water. Bring the ingredients to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes or so. Add all of the other ingredients and simmer for another 30-45 minutes.

At this point, process the sauce in a food processer to make it smooth. As I said before, the sauce I made was not sweet enough for my liking, so I added honey and sugar after the fact. You can experiment with different peppers and spices and start to develop your own distinct BBQ sauce.

This particular batch of BBQ sauce went into three recipes: a BBQ chicken pizza, a pulled BBQ chicken sandwich, and BBQ mac & cheese.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

For this recipe I made pizza dough as I have explained in a previous post and placed the BBQ sauce on the dough (in place of pesto or tomato sauce), added cheese, the pulled chicken , bacon, and red onions. After the pizza was fully cooked, I topped it with cilantro (when adding herbs as a garnish, you want to do it after the dish has fully cooked or else they will lose their flavor).

BBQ Chicken Sandwich

This is as simple as it gets. Just toss the chicken in the BBQ sauce, add lettuce & tomato, and put it on a bun. It makes a great sandwich to take to work.


BBQ Mac & Cheese

This dish has three components: the cheese sauce, the pasta, and the chicken. The original recipe came from the Food Network Magazine, but I altered it a bit.

The pasta preparation is pretty basic: just put it in a pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes. The cheese sauce is a little more complicated: Start by combining flour and melted butter in a sauce pan. Add milk (the recipe called for crème), cheese, sour cream, and BBQ sauce. Cook until it thickens. In a separate frying pan, sauté diced onions and celery. Add the pulled chicken and BBQ sauce.

Combine all of the components in a glass baking dish and cooked the dish for 35 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Once again, this recipe lends itself to experimentation. Be creative with the cheese sauce. The key is that you want it to thicken. You ensure that it does by adding flour. If you decide that flour is needed, be sure not to add too much and to continuously stir -- it tends to become lumpy if you do not.