Wingin’ It: Tennessee Titans

As the Buffalo Bills prepare to face a new opponent each week, fans take on the age-old arch-nemesis know as “hunger.” Never fear, Buffalo Rumblings has just the playbook to take down this foe. Each week, we’ll dive into enemy territory to scout their signature moves and put a “Buffalo” spin on it. Translated, each week we’ll share a themed recipe based on who the Bills are playing, including a custom wing sauce to go with each dish. Our opponent this week:

Tennessee Titans

Slow-Cooked Pulled BBQ Chicken: Having been to Nashville one time for a conference at work, I proclaim myself wholly expert on their sauce techniques. OK, maybe not, but I did eat a lot of it. While my expertise may be in doubt, the beauty of BBQ sauce is the sheer volume of great ways to make it. For this week, we take a simple sauce recipe and steer it the way of Nashville, as defined by research and impressions from when I was there. The name of the game is “sweet,” with a sauce that feels right at home being cooked with the meat or used as a condiment to finish the deal. And of course we’ll wing it up notch with some hot sauce. We’re using a slow cooker as they’re commonly available. The sauce can easily be used on chicken cooked in other ways.

Pulled BBQ Chicken

Serves 6-10
Active Time: 1 Hour
Total Time: 9 Hours

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp butter
• ¹⁄₄ cup finely chopped onion
• ¹⁄₂ cup apple cider
• ¹⁄₂ cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 ¹⁄₂ cups ketchup
• 2-3 Tbsp prepared mustard
• ¹⁄₂ cup hot sauce
• ³⁄₄ cup brown sugar, packed*
• ¹⁄₄ cup honey*
• 1 lb chicken**

Preheat slow cooker on HIGH setting

1. Melt butter in a large pot on HIGH; cook, stirring onions until translucent, 1-2 min.
2. Add cider and cider vinegar; stir, letting the mixture simmer.
3. Add ketchup, mustard and hot sauce. Stir and allow to simmer again.
4. Add brown sugar and honey; stir and allow to simmer. Reduce heat to LOW.
5. Add chicken to slow cooker, cover.
6. Allow sauce to thicken, about 30 minutes, stirring frequently.
7. Add sauce to slow cooker and cover. Reduce heat to LOW and let cook for 8 hours.***
8. Shred chicken with fork and serve.

Wingin’ It Tips:

• *You’ll need one cup of something altogether sugary. Feel free to adjust the brown sugar and honey ratios, all the way to using one or the other exclusively.
• **It’s unlikely you’ll find a package of chicken that’s exactly one pound. For this amount of sauce, I’d recommend buying a little over if given the choice. All the way up to 1 ¹⁄₄ lb should be fine.
• ***It can be helpful to flip the chicken once or twice during the cooking process. For a thicker sauce, leave the slow cooker set to “HIGH” for two hours before turning to low

The Beer: As you may have gathered from the ingredient list, BBQ sauce is a quick way to spike the ol’ sugar levels. To help balance that out, a lighter beer pairs nicely.

Beer products provided by Labatt USA. Please drink responsibly.

Coming soon!

The Buffalo Bills face the Houston Texans next week and as we all know Texas is widely renowned for its...BBQ. There’s nothing wrong with two weeks of BBQ, right? Since it’ll be recent memory and all, for the Houston installment we’ll focus more on how to make it your own and work in some different techniques.