And all of a sudden I know how to cook...kind of. I love that since I started working from home and now that I'm just home most of the day, I can really utilize my crockpot. Not to say that I couldn't when I worked outside of the house, but I'm still hesitant to leave something plugged in and emanating heat for 8 hours of the day. I don't want to be the one at fault for burning our house down. ;-) And because I haven't mastered cooking full-on meals, I've resorted to easing into my cooking escapades slowly by using the "slow cooker". Ooh, the irony!
My bf loves his meat just like pretty much every guy does, so when I found this Pulled BBQ Chicken recipe on How Sweet It Is, I knew he would LOVE it! And for someone like me who doesn't usually gravitate towards meaty dishes, it actually looked pretty darn delicious! I used some variations in the way I prepared it, so I'll explain...
Jessica used 6 large chicken breasts in her recipe, but I knew that 1) it's just Mike and I eating this and 2) Mike can't stand leftovers (except for a good pizza or Hamburger Helper dish, and maybe this would be included but I didn't want to take my chances) so I decided to halve the recipe.
Here's what I used...if you compare hers to mine you'll find I used some creative liberties in mine ;-) but I gotta say, it totally worked!
Ingredients:
3 large boneless and skinless chicken breasts
1/2 Tablespoon of paprika
1/4 teaspoon of garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of pepper
8 oz. of beer (yup same amount she used with less chicken just because the BBQ sauce I used was thicker than hers, so I wanted the extra liquid to thin out the BBQ sauce a bit)
1/2 bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (about 14 oz.)
So, while at the grocery store I thought for sure I saw "Sweet Baby Ray's" BBQ sauce on the recipe...well, I did...but it was the example of what NOT to use as it is a thicker sauce and may burn if left too long in the crockpot. Because of the thickness of the sauce I used what I call a "thin" beer rather than the Amber kind Jessica used. I used 8oz. of a Corona.
I woke up rather late and the recipe called for 8 hours of crock pot cooking...at 10:30 I was not about to be eating dinner at 7-8 at night. No Sir-ee!
So, I poured the BBQ sauce and beer in the crockpot and stirred till both were evenly mixed. Then, I seasoned the chicken with all the spices and added it to the crockpot. I cooked on HIGH for about 1.5 hours before turning the crockpot to LOW. I allowed the chicken to cook for another 2 hours before switching the crockpot to WARM for another 3 hours. We were ready to eat at about 6!
Every so often I would turn the chicken making sure all sides were adequately cooked and soaking up the sauces. By doing so, the chicken started to pull away from itself on its own. It really was perfection!
I used a Colombo Potato Dinner Roll as the bun for our mini pulled BBQ chicken sliders. And from my Best of Betty Crocker Magazine, I made a perfect bowtie pasta salad to go with the meal.
Mike was definitely satisfied with my cooking choice and devoured 3 mini sliders in minutes!
And as promised...the apple treats are still a-comin! I will be making Mini Apple Pies tomorrow :-) I can't wait!
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