Hello, this is chef. John from food wishes comm with
buttermilk barbecued chicken
That's right. The last time you were enjoying a really good plate of southern fried chicken
There is a very good chance that that was marinated in buttermilk before was cooked
But for whatever reason that same buttermilk, so it's not used very often when the chicken is gonna be roasted or grilled
In fact, I'm gonna have to ask some old southern people why that is since it really does work quite well
No matter how you're gonna cook your chicken
So with that let's go ahead and get started with the star of the show some beautiful cultured buttermilk
And by the way, do not let the name fool you this is actually very low fat it contains virtually no butter at all
Alright, the name comes from the fact that he used to be made by fermenting the leftover way when they made butter
But anyway to our buttermilk, we will add some brown sugar
As well as a little splash apple cider vinegar
We will also do a whole bunch of mince garlic
As well as some dry thyme and a whole bunch of freshly ground black pepper
Plus some type of paprika
Okay, I'm using smoked but you could use regular sweet or hopped or any combination?
we will also add some ground cumin as well as some cayenne of course and
Then we'll finish up with a whole bunch of kosher salt and that's it. We'll go ahead and give this a proper whisking. Oh
And let me give you a little obvious advice
As long as you have the butter milk sugar and salt you can add any other spices you want
I mean you are after all the Bismarck key of this buttermilk barbecue chickadee and
It's up to you to make sure it's got what you need got what you need
But anyway, we'll go ahead and mix that up at which point we can move on to prepping our chicken
which is basically gonna be a refresher course for how to cut up a whole chicken into to gorilla bull halves and
Personally for me. I like to trim off the flat parts of the wings first
alright
Those things always seem to get in the way and the tips burn
And I'd rather just grill those separately and have a little secret snack while I'm cooking
But suit yourself and then once that set we'll go ahead and flip our chicken over
And we'll go ahead and switch to some kitchen shears and what we'll do starting from the tail end
It's cut all the way up to the front of the chicken going as close to the backbone as we can get
And we'll go ahead and do that on both sides
And while of course you can use a knife for this for your average home cook and they're usually sort of dull knives. I
find this method a lot more successful and
Then what we'll do once that spine has been scissored is switched back to the knife
And we're gonna make one cut right in the center through a piece of cartilage that covers the breastbone. I
Try to cut right in the middle. Like I just did not do
And if we cut it in about a quarter of an inch deep and then sort of snap each side upward like this
We're gonna reveal that breast bone
Which is now very easy to pull out along with the rest of the cartilage that goes down the center
all right, we'll just peel that out and
Once that's been removed
All we have holding. Our two halves together is some meat and skin
which we will simply cut through to make two halves and
other than possibly trimming off a little excess skin or fat that is pretty much the entire operation and
We can now transfer our backbone Liss halves into a plastic bag, which will have set in a bowl
And we'll go ahead and pour in our buttermilk marinade and once all that's been transferred in
We will simultaneously
Seal the bag while pressing out most of the air
and making sure all the nooks and crannies of our chicken are coming into contact with our marinade and if you're wondering why the bowl
it's because if you don't use the bowl some small sharp piece of bone will pop the plastic and
You'll have buttermilk leaking all over your fridge. So it is just much safer to use the bowl as well and
That's it. Once our chickens been buttermilk damn bagged
we'll go ahead and transfer that into the fridge to marinate anywhere between 6 and 18 hours and
In case you're keeping score at home, I did mine for about eight
at which point we'll go ahead and fish that out and transfer down to a paper towel-lined plate and
Then it's probably not a bad idea to grab a couple paper towels and blot off the excess from the skin
since putting super wet things on a grill is not generally a great idea and
Then once that set I also like to sprinkle on a little extra salt at least to the skin side and that's it
we are now ready to grab our tongs and head outside where hopefully we have some beautifully hot glowing red hardwood lump charcoal and
by the way
If your coals are still on fire do not put your chicken down
Waiting for it to burn down and for the edges of your charcoal to get ashy
And what we're gonna do is place our chicken cut side down
Skin side up and we're gonna cook it like that covered for 20 minutes
and by the way, the temperature inside this thing covered is gonna range between 375 and 400 and
Then what we'll do after 20 minutes is go ahead and give this a flip and then we'll let it grow with that skin side
Down for just like five or ten minutes
Okay, just so it gets a little bit of color
but for this recipe, the majority of the cooking is going to be done with the skin side up and
Part of that is when you do a dairy based marinade the skin can burn in black and relatively quickly
But also by barbecuing with the skin up the fat underneath the skin is going to sort of based our meat as it cooks
So I just gave that side about seven minutes or so and then flipped it back over
Where we will continue until it's cooked all the way through. Oh
And is a great philosopher once said life is a compromise
And when you do use a wet marinade like a yogurt or buttermilk, you're generally not gonna get that beautifully brown crispy skin
But that's okay because that trade-off is gonna get us some beautifully moist flavorful meat
And besides if we were doing regular barbecue chicken, and you were brushing this with a sauce
We're basically gonna be ending up with the same thing
But anyway, I went ahead and finished mine off for another 15 minutes like that
At which point I determined it was safely cooked and I went ahead and pulled it off and we will head back inside
Where we will let our chicken rest for exactly 0 minutes
All right, unlike some barbecued meats, we can go ahead and throw this right on the plate
Possibly next to a little potato salad and coleslaw
plus for some reason I did a piece of lemon which I
inexplicably garnished with a chive blossom as I was really overthinking this I mean
I thought it would look pretty but it just sort of looked dirty. But anyway forget about that
Let's talk about how incredibly juicy and delicious this buttermilk barbecue chicken really was
All right. I really hope you can see how beautifully moist this is
just absolutely dripping and
Above and beyond the marinade making this tender and juicy a little bit of Tang eNOS
the buttermilk imparts really does help create an especially flavorful chicken and
That this works. So well really does make sense considering that yogurt is a very popular marinade for grilled meats
So basically, it's the same idea here
Which reminds me if you can't find buttermilk just use some thinned out yogurt Oh
in the true test to know if you properly barbecue to chicken is if you can cut a thin slice of the breast and it
Doesn't totally shred apart into little pieces
Which it will do if it's too dry, ur overcooked
so this really was perfect and besides the marinade not overcooking it is also key and
Obviously if the white meat is juicy and flavorful, you know
The dark meats gonna be just as good if not better and right here
I felt obligated to use a little bit of that lemon
Except I squeezed it onto the skin and it just beated up and rolled off
So I was not having a good day with the lemon but to be honest
I really didn't care that much because this chicken really did come out great
But anyway, that's it where we're calling buttermilk BBQ chicken
Not only does the buttermilk make for a super easy and very delicious marinade
But with the rest of the core you buy you can whip up a batch of our famous award-winning
Buttermilk biscuits or our equally amazing buttermilk pie or just make a double batch of this
But no matter what you do with the rest. I really do. Hope you give this a try soon
So head over to food vs. Comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always
enjoy
You