American Classics with Scott Peacock: BBQ Chicken

" -Hi, I'm Nancy Hopkins, food editor for Better Homes and Gardens Magazine and I'm here today with Scott Peacock and we're making another American classic. What are we making today?"

" -Oven barbecued chicken."

" -Wow. How do we get started?"

" -We're gonna start with the sauce and, in this pot, we've got a little bit of butter melted up here and we've got some really finely diced onion,"

" and we're gonna add that in and--"

" -What next?"

" -Some chopped garlic."

" -Garlic. So just cook those?"

" -Yeah, just 'til they're soft."

" -Okay."

" -We don't wanna color them. We're not trying to get any color. We're just trying to soften them up and then we've got some salt."

" -Is that kosher salt? "

" -This is kosher salt. "

" -Okay."

" -And some crushed red pepper."

" -For a bit of heat."

" -And some chili powder for flavor. This is paprika."

" -Ah, okay."

" -So, again, not so hot. We're getting all the heat from the crushed red pepper, really. Great, smell delicious."

" Pour in some water and we're gonna pour in some cider vinegar."

" -What's this? Molasses?"

" -A bit of molasses."

" -Oh, I love molasses."

" -Which is a fantastic flavor."

" -And that gives it a lot of body, I bet."

" -Body and flavor."

" -This is so simple. It feels like a lot of ingredients but it's really just add, add, stir, right?"

" -Exactly, and they're all pantry ingredients, too. The Worcestershire sauce,"

" and we've got some brown sugar."

" -Oh, and tomato paste."

" -And then tomato paste which will really thicken it up and give it that great tomato flavor. And that's it and you're just gonna bring this up to a simmer and cook it for about 15 or 20 minutes."

" -That's it?"

" -That's it. So, Nance, we've got two whole chickens that we've cut up into pieces."

" -That's a great way to feed a crowd. It's really economical, too, right?"

" -Absolutely, and we're just gonna season it up really good with some salt and pepper."

" -Scott, so you brown these off on both sides."

" -Yes, season them well and brown them."

" -Why do you have the breast in the pan separate?"

" -Because the dark meat takes longer to cook and we're gonna cook this for almost twice as long as we do the breast and if you were to cook a breast that long, they would get stringy whereas the dark meat is gonna get really tender and falling off the bone. So we're gonna put just a little bit of chicken stock. You could also use water."

" Just about a quarter of an inch worth in the pan. That's just gonna give some moisture and help in the cooking."

" -Okay."

" -And then we've got this delicious sauce now that's thickened up and cooled down."

" -Gorgeous."

" -Really, really good and we're just gonna spoon it over the chicken."

" -Just to barely cover?"

" -Yeah, generous cover, I'd say."

" -Why the parchment?"

" -There's a lot of vinegar in the sauce so it's very acidic and that could react to the aluminum foil so having the parchment in between the foil and the sauce will keep that from happening."

" -I see."

" -So these are out of the oven and ready to go and what we've done is we cooked the breast for about half an hour and the dark meat for about an hour and ten minutes."

" -Okay."

" -Then we took the foil off the top and cooked them a little bit more 'til they were glazed over really nice like they are now and we're ready to eat."

" -Scott, I can't wait to dig in. I'm Nancy Hopkins."