Pulled BBQ Chicken

We don’t watch football, but when a Sunday in fall, especially a gray and cloudy Sunday, rolls around, I have the urge to spend the day at home cooking. Most of the time we have too many plans and end up spending the day running around, but this past Sunday was a cooking day.

After picking up a big grocery haul at Trader Joe’s, I headed home to get started on our Sunday menu, homemade BBQ pulled chicken on home baked rolls.

I started with 4 organic, free-range chicken breasts from the freezer, left frozen. I tossed those into the slow cooker with a diced yellow onion, 3 cloves of garlic and a few good shakes of hot sauce.  I put the chicken on low and got started on the sauce.

As always, I consulted various recipes online before I made my own combination up. I added about 2 cups ketchup, 1 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, lots of hot sauce, a few shakes of crushed red pepper and garlic powder, then stirred it all up.

I was pretty psyched when it actually looked like BBQ sauce (I know, not very difficult, but we just always bought it; I’m getting better!)

I added half of the sauce to the slow cooker after the chicken was cooking for an hour, then waited a bit longer before using forks to shred the meat in the sauce. Then I added more sauce and let it sit on low for another 30 minutes.

Once it was all cooked, I set the cooker to warm so that the meat wouldn’t overcook, but it would be ready for us to eat for dinner.

Meanwhile, I used a recipe from King Arthur Flour, in addition to some of the flour I received at our King Arthur baking class. I also bought instant yeast at the King Arthur Baker’s Store, and with all of that yeast, I certainly need to be baking!

I have discovered I no longer fear dough; I LOVE it!

I shaped the whole wheat dough into 8 buns, then let them rise on a grease cookie sheet. They were so puffy when it was time for them to go into the oven!

The end result? Perfect! These rolls were really soft and tasted like bread from a bakery. I was pretty proud!

I served the pulled chicken on the rolls, topped with pickles and this delicious jalapeno yogurt cheese from Trader Joe’s. It is a new favorite.

Hooray for chilly Sundays and homemade meals! How do your weekends change throughout the year? I love that our distinct seasons here in New England somewhat dictate what we do on the weekends.