I cannot believe I haven't talked about this yet. This is the first recipe that we made in our new slow cooker and it is absolutely fabulous. (Kudos to ArachneJericho who recommended it to us!) I've already made this three times and we haven't even owned our slow cooker an entire month! I love barbecued pulled meat. Chicken and pork especially. But I've never really attempted to make it myself because it seemed so complicated and involved lots of oven-time, which heats up our small kitchen incredibly. (However, in the winter, it makes for a nice room to play board games while watching the snow fall!) I'm not a fan of recipes that call for adding one bottle and two cans of this or that to meat in a slow cooker. I'd rather add all the little tweakable ingredients and wind up with something amazing waiting for me at dinnertime. This fits the bill. It's easy - the sauce can be made up the night before - and relatively inexpensive, since bone-in chicken leg quarters, drumsticks or thighs are usually the cheapest chicken cuts you can find in a store. Most importantly, it's delicious. The only problem with it is that it's not well suited to throwing together in the morning before work. I have done it on LOW, it took about 6 hours, but more would not have been terribly beneficial. This is one you want to prep in the morning, leave the crock in the fridge and stop by at lunch to turn on the slow cooker so dinner is ready when you get home.

Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken [printable recipe]

Lightly adapted from Food Thinkers
Serves 2 with lots of leftovers or 4 with very few

Mix up everything but the chicken in a small bowl. Arrange chicken in one layer on the bottom of a 4 - 6 qt slow cooker and pour the sauce over evenly. Cook on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours. Remove bones if necessary and shred chicken well. Mix shredded chicken with sauce well then serve.

Notes:

  1. Ketchup manufacturers are FINALLY seeing the light! Hunts now proudly exclaims that their ketchup contains no high fructose corn syrup. Heinz has about three different types of ketchup that are really good - Simply Heinz, Reduced Sugar Heinz (uses Splenda), and Organic Heinz (which tastes the best, in my opinion). Using a not-so-sweet ketchup is key to a great sauce.