Pop’s Drunk Chicken

Ben Conner
Houston, TX

This recipe comes from a combination of my Mom and Dad (Pop), and no, you don’t have to get the chicken drunk, before cooking him/her.

½ chickens per person
Salt and pepper

Start your charcoal fire, and let coals burn until they are gray. Place some (two handfuls) pre-soaked hickory chips on the fire.

Salt and pepper chicken halves on both sides, heavily (about twice as much as you think you need).Place chicken on grill, skin up, and cook for 10 – 15 minutes. I like to put my lid on my grill, and let the smoke do its job for 10 minutes. Turn chicken over and cook for another 10 – 15 minutes (depending on how hot your fire is, try not to burn the skin).Place chicken in a turkey roaster, and place in preheated 275 degree oven, covered, for 75 minutes. Remove from oven, and let sit for 15 minutes before serving with “Alabama white sauce” (If you do not like vinegar, you will not like the white sauce)!

You can cook individual pieces of chicken this way, but for a crowd, or dinner party, I like the ½ chickens much better. They seem to cook much better, and you can cut up easily before serving, and eat the left-over the next day.

Now, for the conclusion of the story……my Dad liked a martini or five, and would put the chicken on (after I had gone out into the woods to climb trees for hickory bark…we had no trees with hickory bark for a square mile, by the time I was 10).After cooking the chicken for 10-15 minutes, he would come in, and say “let’s eat”, and of course, the chicken was half done; therefore, my Mom would fix him his 6th martini, put the chicken in the oven, and cook it until it was done !