Pulled pork gets all the press, but it took my friend Meg to remind me about pulled chicken. Years and years ago, I made pulled chicken from a recipe published in the late 1700s. That recipe called for cooked chicken pulled from the bones and then drenched in chicken gravy. I used to serve it with rice.
In the 1970s, when I was first pulling chicken, I didn’t even know about pulled pork with barbecue sauce on it. It seems impossible not to have known, but four decades ago, Tex-Mex cuisine had not quite oozed into New England. “Barbecue” and “chicken” was reserved for the backyard grill accompanied by potato salad and coleslaw.
It turns out that making pulled chicken of the spicy sort was so easy, provided enough for a small crowd or a couple suppers, and left me with all the needful for a quart or so of chicken stock. I ought to do that again some time.
Essentially, all I did was deposit a whole roasting chicken in one of my heavy bottomed pots, dribble in a modicum of water, just enough to prevent sticking at first, clapped a lid on ‘er and turned the heat to low. Two or three hours later I came back and found the meat was done enough to drop from the bones. I took it out and let it cool until I could handle it, then I shredded it into a bowl, tossing the bones and skin back into the pot. Then the chicken was ready to have barbecue sauce dumped on it.
What you do about barbecue sauce is really a matter of personal taste. You may very well have a personal favorite and goodness knows there are dozens of sauces available and you may have a recipe for one that you love to make. This time I used a wonderful one made and vended by that terrific food and cookware store in Ellsworth. I wish I owned a tank of it. You could put pulled chicken on a bun or into a taco shell, or even on a pile of lettuce to eat it.
Then I had a pot with bones and cooking juices to which I added enough water to cover the bones, a bay leaf, a rib of celery, a carrot chopped up, and an onion. That simmered together for a while, then I ran the stock through a colander and stuck it in the freezer.
What follows is hardly a recipe, but consider it a friendly guide to a very easy way to prepare a lot of chicken for company, guests, family, or your own delectation for days.
- Pulled Chicken
- 1 whole roasting chicken, 7 to 8 pounds
- ½ cup water
- Barbecue sauce to taste
- Take the package of liver, neck, and gizzards out of the chicken and put it into a heavy pot.
- Pour the water into the pot, cover it with a reasonably tight lid, and set it over a low heat on the stove for two to three hours, or until you can easily pull out a leg bone.
- Allow the chicken to cool enough to handle. Pull the meat off the bones and shred apart. Add barbecue sauce to taste and toss until sufficiently covered.
- Re-warm briefly in a microwave or oven and serve, or divide and freeze a portion for use later.