a simple real food recipe :: slow baked barbeque chicken

Roasting or crockpotting a whole chicken every week has been a part of my routine for a few years now. It is a fantastic, frugal way to nourish your family with pastured instead of hormone infested meat every week.

My typical process is having roasted chicken dinner on Monday nights, and then using the leftover meat for other meals during the week. It makes meal planning/making much simpler and faster, and who doesn’t need that!?A while ago however, I wanted to change up roasted chicken dinner night with a different flavor, and decided I was really wanting barbeque (wishful summer thinking?!). I decided to give it a go and it turned out fabulous – happy hubby’s are always a winner in my book 😉You really could break down your whole chicken into parts and bake it off quicker. I like doing this method because of a few reasons:

1. I am horrible at breaking down a whole chicken – it takes me just about forever and it looks like I murdered the poor thing.
2. I am pregnant and just the fact that I am getting a raw chicken rinsed off for the oven is enough to get my pregnant gag going let alone having to break it down. (I never have this issue not pregnant! Do you?!)
3. I don’t really want the whole chicken barbequed – just the part we’ll be eating that night – it is nice to have the rest of the bird a “clean slate” for using in other meals. If you have a larger family that will eat a whole chicken at dinner time then I would totally break it down and BBQ up the whole thing though!

This is really the same method as my roasted chicken – only to be honest it is even easier – and it is SO good!

a simple real food recipe :: slow baked barbeque chicken

 

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Author: Renee - www.theSIMPLEmoms.com

Ingredients

• 1 whole pastured chicken, rinsed
• Filtered water for the pan
• FOR THE BARBEQUE SAUCE (mix these together in a small cup – can be made ahead of time and stored in the fridge):
• ¼ cup organic ketchup (watch ingredients!)
• 2 tsp blackstrap molasses
• 1 TB organic mustard (watch ingredients!)
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• ½ tsp onion powder
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp raw honey
• A pinch or two of chipotle powder (to taste)

Instructions

1. Put the chicken breast side DOWN in a roasting pan that has a lid and fill the pan with filtered water ⅓ of the way up the pan.
2. Put the lid on the roaster and bake at 275 degrees for 3 hours.
3. Take the pan out of the oven and turn the chicken around to breast side UP. Carefully pat the skin so it isn’t dripping wet and brush a layer of barbeque sauce over the breasts and the legs.
4. Put the chicken back in the oven WITHOUT the lid and bake at 350 for another 30-45 minutes. EVERY 10-15 MINUTES take the chicken out and brush another layer of barbeque sauce over the breasts and the legs. No lid.
5. Let the chicken rest a good 5-10 minutes before cutting.

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1. Make up the BBQ sauce beforehand – it only takes 5 minutes to stir up anyway. This really doesn’t take much hands on time – which is why I like the “not breaking the chicken down” method so much. Just chicken, water, and some BBQ sauce brushed on!
2. I usually split a breast with the girls and my husband will eat most of the other breast or have the legs – this bird was just over 6lbs so we had a lot of meat left for the week. Just peel off the BBQ skin that you don’t want for leftovers – the skin is pretty coveted in our house (!) and a lot of the time hubs will just double it up on his 😉
3. You can double the BBQ sauce recipe if you want some to dip your chicken in! It keeps well in the fridge.
4. Use the leftover meat for leftovers the rest of the week! See my crockpotted chicken and roasted chicken methods for ideas that are linked in the pingbacks!
5. Also – see the crockpotted chicken post about why it is so important to pick out pastured chickens vs conventional.
6. HERE is the roasting pan like what I use – I have a small one and a large one to accommodate the size meat I’m working with!

YOUR TURN!

Let me know what you think if you try it out!

This post was shared at The Polikva Family’s Family Table Tuesday and Real Food Forager’s Fat Tuesday!