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A guide to the best barbecue sauce (and beer) for every meat

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Ahhh! Barbecue sauce. A hot button culinary topic if there ever was one. 

Fortunately, I’m a meat guy from the home of lobster and clam chowdah, so my loyalties with BBQ sauce aren’t regional and tend to be with whatever will make what I’m cooking taste amazing! 

Here’s a breakdown of some of the fantastic barbecue sauces you can find throughout America. These are best when done following a homemade bbq sauce recipe, hundreds of which are online and you can experiment with. The best bbq sauces avoid high-fructose corn syrup-heavy ingredients for cayenne peppers, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar. However, sometimes a little ketchup can be all you need to make the perfect sauce for any meat.

Alabama White Barbecue Sauce

The white barbecue sauce made famous at Big Bob Gibson’s Bar-B-Q in Northern Alabama is by far one for the more unique of the American BBQ sauces, but only because our national perception of the perfect sauce for BBQ chicken is shaped by the rows of dark brown Sweet Baby Ray’s bottles lining our grocery stores and the more midwestern and coastal influences of Kansas City, Memphis, and Carolina.

Honestly, mixing mayo and horseradish is phenomenal; Robert Gibson knew what he was doing 96 years ago when he invented the sauce.

Alabama White sauce is best for… 

Grilled chicken or pork chops. Lightly flavored meat, some char from the grill, a creamy tangy sauce to dip into. 

 It is amazing paired with a summer ale, something with a creamy finish and citrus notes.

Memphis BBQ Sauce 

Next, we go to the signature barbecue flavor of Memphis, Tennessee. Traditionally Memphis BBQ is dry rub only and often served with sauce on the side. Memphis sauce features lots of molasses and vinegar, and tomato-based, often by using tomato paste. This is all to say it’s certainly a familiar barbecue flavor but is often much thinner than your average BBQ sauce.


Try Memphis BBQ sauce on… 

Definitely smoked baby back ribs. Memphis BBQ is a great way to serve ribs if you want to avoid the mess of traditionally-sauced ribs. Memphis ribs are dry, the sauce is wet, and your fingers stay clean! Mostly…

The perfect beer for Memphis BBQ is definitely an IPA. With a light and refreshing taste but some bitter hoppy undertones, and IPA can bang heads with the smokey spicy bark on great ribs.

Texas Barbecue Sauce

Now to Texas. The Lone Star State is big, bold, spicy, and tangy; they also have great BBQ sauce. Featuring a tomato sauce base and a combination of garlic, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, and lemon juice, Texas sauce using has some extra heat from cayenne peppers, chipotle peppers, or some other chili pepper.

Seriously, Texas sauce has immense flavor and purposefully so, Texas barbecue is magnificent. 

Texas Barbecue sauce was made for…

Beef brisket. There is no choice but brisket. Beefy, bold, and fatty, the most flavorful of all meats is magical with the richest of all BBQ sauces.

As for a libation to go with the BBQ brisket, I’d go light here, mostly because I want room for more brisket. All the ranchers I’ve met drink Michelob Ultra like water. So judge if need be, but don’t knock it till you try it. 

St. Louis Barbecue Sauce

Rolling into Missouri we have the home of the great St Louis ribs. Good pork tends to be sweet, and the classic St. Louis sauce is sweet to match. Sticky. Sweet. Tomato-based. Unlike most other American barbecue sauces, St. Louis prefers to hold the liquid smoke from their namesake sauce. If you’re gonna sauce your ribs, this is the way to do it. 

Best use for St. Louis sauce…

St Louis ribs of course. But the flavors work great on really any fatty cut of BBQ pork.

And as for beer, the only choice is the St. Louis original, Budweiser, right?

Kansas City BBQ Sauce

Staying in Missouri, we next have the ubiquitous Kansas City style of sauce. This is closest to the universal BBQ sauce experience. Thick, sweet, smokey, and tomato-based, with ketchup as a key ingredient, Kansas City BBQ sauce is pretty much delicious on anything. 

Smother Kansas City sauce on…

The most beefy-tasty meats like sirloin steaks, chuck steaks, the cowboy cuts, or brisket burnt ends. All these cuts have to have enough beefy flavor to marry well with such a rich sauce.

I’d lean towards hops again for a beer to go with St. Louis barbecue ribs. You want something to cut the richness, definitely a hoppy lager. Sam Adams is a personal fave, but maybe I’m biased, having grown up not far from their headquarters in Boston.

South Carolina Barbecue Sauce

Moving into the Carolinas is where flavor and consistency get really interesting. In South Carolina, we leave the tomato-based sauces behind for mustard, vinegar, as well as ground black pepper, garlic, and other spices. This sauce is spicy, super tangy, and has a dash of sweetness. It is amazing on smoked pork matching well with the rich meat with incredible brightness. 

South Carolina sauce should drench…

Pulled pork. It’s how I was taught by a Deep South chef, and goshdarnit, if it ain’t still the best choice on tender, smoked pork.

Beer? Again, let’s match with a craft IPA. I’m looking for citrus, maybe even some tropical notes. Something fruity to add sweetness as a counterpoint the tanginess of the sauce, so a cloudy New England-Style IPA is perfect. I like local favorite Night Shift based in Everett, MA, which has an amazing choice of varieties. 

Eastern North Carolina BBQ Sauce

Into eastern North Carolina we go, where we encounter perhaps the simplest of all BBQ sauces. Basically, this style is just vinegar and spices like cayenne pepper or crushed red pepper flakes. It’s a sauce that works well with anything grilled or smoked and really lets the meat speak for itself.

Use Eastern NC sauce with…

Pork chops, grilled chicken, dressing for a chicken salad, and any lighter meats that can use a tangy boost. 

Best with a lighter beer, I’d go with a pale lager or pilsner. Make sure it is full-bodied enough to add some richness but light enough not to overwhelm.

Western North Carolina BBQ Sauce

They take BBQ sauce very seriously in the Carolinas. It is, after all, thought to be the birthplace of American BBQ. And so, in western North Carolina we find a second variety. This one is similar to its eastern cousin, but with the addition of some tomato for flavor. 

Good luck arguing which sauce is better with anyone from the Tarheel State. Fortunately for me, I get to pick and choose my loyalties…

I can’t get enough Western Carolina sauce on…

Some of the richer cuts of light meat like chicken thighs, pork sirloin, and country-style ribs The tomato adds a bit of sweet acidity to this sauce that helps those more flavorful cuts.

Pair with a wheat beer — like an Allagash — that adds a bit of muted sweetness with a barely there tanginess. A real compliment to the Lexington Piedmont style sauce.

 

bacon-jam

Bacon is our jam – The history of the most delicious breakfast meat with a special bacon jam recipe

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Check out an amazing bacon jam recipe at the bottom of this post from our Head ButcherBox Chef.

Bacon has been around for a long time. In fact, the earliest recorded examples of the cut date back to 1,500 B.C. The fatty back or belly of pork was popular with the Greeks and Roman, the latter who cooked it with figs and flavored with pepper. 

Breakfast meat history

What we know as bacon today is not precisely what has been traditionally known as bacon or bacoun. In much of Europe, the word bacon was used as a synonym for all pork. The word bacon and its earlier form bacoun were derived from French, German, and Teutonic versions for “back.”

The form of salt-cured and sliced bacon we know in America today is much different from its earlier forms and is known as “streaky” bacon in the United Kingdom. 

Bacon became a common dish in England starting in the 17th century. According to the Oxford Companion of Food, bacon, especially smoked bacon and extra-fatty bacon was a staple for almost everyone except the very poor across the British Isles. In fact, many families would keep their bacon in a prominent place in the home as a point of pride. For centuries, Bacon grease was a common cooking fat, which remained true until the mid-twentieth century when bacon fat was replaced by olive oil, vegetable oil, and other fats not derived from meat.

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Modern bacon

Today, Wiltshire in England remains one of the world’s bacon-producing centers; Wiltshire has been the center of the bacon universe since John Harris set up the first large-scale bacon curing business there in the 1770s.  

The modern, American version of bacon was an innovation of butcher and manufacturing. At the turn twentieth century, the meat industry moved away from salt-curing and smoking bacon, and found it more affordable to sugar-brine pork belly at a large scale. Before 1915, bacon was still sold as a solid hunk of meat — usually four pounds — and people cut bacon into smaller pieces in the home. 

Until the 1960s, bacon maintained its reputation as being a “country” cut of pork, a holdover from its English peasant popularity. As wet-cured, pre-sliced bacon became easier to package, it appeared more readily in stores and — due to its sweet and salty flavor — found its ways to the breakfast plates of many Americans as the perfect companion to fried eggs. 

You can even make homemade bacon jam these days

These days, you can find bacon beyond the morning breakfast table as the cut of pork has spiked in popularity over the past two decades. 

There is dark brown sugar candied bacon, maple bacon, applewood smoked bacon, turkey bacon, and even, shockingly, meatless veggie bacon. 

These days, you can find bacon cheeseburgers almost anywhere someone is making burgers, and it is especially useful — to add some fatty flavor — to lead cuts of beef like filet mignon. Bacon appears everywhere from donuts to ice cream to cocktails — in the form of sweet bacon candy — and can even be made into a form of bacon jam. 

Our Head ButcherBox Chef, Yankel Polak, has devised an ingenious bacon jam recipe that he thinks is best used when added to a cheeseburger. It could also be added to grilled cheese or mixed in with roasted and mashed potatoes, pasta, or scrambled eggs. 

Is your mouth watering yet?

Without further ado, here is Chef Yankel’s famous burger recipe featuring his own unique homemade bacon jam recipe featuring maple syrup, brown sugar, coffee, and Guinness.

Chef Yankel’s “Epic Burger With 15 Ingredient Homemade Bacon Jam”

Total time: 1 hour and 15 minutes 

Prep time: 60 minutes

Cook time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

  • 4 ButcherBox Burgers or ButcherBox Ground Beef molded into 6oz burger patties

Bacon Jam

  • 1 pack (10 oz) ButcherBox Bacon, roughly chopped
  • ½ onion, diced
  • 3 Tbsp brown sugar
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • ¼ tsp cayenne
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • ¼ c bourbon
  • 3 Tbsp cold brew coffee
  • 3 Tbsp Guinness
  • 3 Tbsp sherry vinegar
  • 3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • ¼ c maple syrup
  • ¼ c ketchup 

Onion Rings

  • 1 red onion, sliced and separated
  • 1 c buttermilk
  • 1 Tbsp smoked paprika
  • 1 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 Tbsp chipotle powder
  • 1 tsp kosher salt
  • 1 c cornstarch
  • 2 c peanut oil 

Truffle Mayo

  • ½ c mayonnaise
  • 2 Tbsp truffle puree (or truffle oil)
  • salt and black pepper to taste

Fixins

  • salt and black pepper to taste
  • 2 Tbsp ghee
  • 4 thick slices sharp yellow cheddar
  • 4 leaves butter lettuce
  • 4 large tomato slices
  • 4 sesame hamburger buns

 

Directions:

1. Place bacon in a cold Dutch oven on medium heat (starting cold renders the fat better). Cook bacon until crispy, then drain half the bacon fat. Keep the other half in the pan.

2. Add onions to bacon and sauté. Once onions are translucent, add nutmeg, cinnamon, cayenne, garlic cloves, and brown sugar. Stir until sugar has melted.

3. Add bourbon, coffee, Guinness, sherry vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and maple syrup. Simmer on medium heat until liquid is reduced by half.

4. Remove from heat and let cool at room temperature for 5 min. Place mixture in food processor, add ketchup and pulse to a chunky jammy texture. Refrigerate for up to 30 days or freeze up to 6 months.

5. Soak red onion slices in buttermilk for 30 min.

6. Preheat peanut oil to 350°F.

7. Mix cornstarch, kosher salt, smoked paprika, chipotle powder and garlic powder.

8. Coat onion slices evenly with the spice mix and fry gently for 2 min or until golden brown. Let rest on a paper towel-lined plate to drain excess oil.

9. Mix mayo, truffle puree and salt and black pepper. Refrigerate until needed.

10. Bring burgers to room temperature and season both sides with salt and pepper.

11. Preheat a large skillet (preferably cast-iron skillet) and add 2 Tbsp ghee. Once the ghee is hot, sear burgers for 3 min on one side. Flip burgers, place cheddar on the burger and sear the other side for three more min or until desired doneness.

12. Spread truffle mayo liberally on both sides of the bun. Place lettuce leaf down first (to protect the bun from burger juices), followed by tomato.

13. Place burger on top of tomato followed by a healthy dollop of bacon jam. Top with onion rings and close that baby up! Be sure to let us know how it went! 

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bacon recipe

6 of our favorite bacon recipes you need in your life right now

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We are very passionate about bacon here at ButcherBox. So much so, it is sometimes all we think about.

We love crisp bacon in all manner of form and function, as a side dish or a main dish: In a cheddar cheese omelet, featured on a bacon cheeseburger, in a delish BLT, wrapped around a steak, wrapped inside a chicken breast, smashed into in grilled cheese, mixed into mashed potatoes, in a salad — maybe a California Cobb or in bacon ranch dressing — maple bacon, apple bacon, bourbon bacon…any type of crispy bacon makes us swoon.

We have experimented and devised a number of ways to cook bacon.

Many of the recipes that we use over and over again — with delicious results every time — are developed by our own Head ButcherBox Chef, Yankel Polak.

We have also discovered some amazing bacon recipes created by some friends of ButcherBox.

Here are our favorite bacon recipes at the moment:

  1. Chef Yankel’s Candied Bacon bacon-recipe

    Bacon candy! This amazing recipe allows you to easily make bacon that you can serve and eat as a standalone dish. This savory treat is enhanced by the addition of maple syrup, sriracha, and brown sugar flavors. Trendy, high-class cocktail bars and restaurants are replacing their bar peanuts with candy bacon more and more. But you don’t have to go out to enjoy this amazing take on bacon. Grab a baking sheet and in 16 minutes and 6 easy steps, you can have Chef Yankel’s “Perfect Candied Bacon” for yourself.

  2. Bacon-wrapped Filet bacon-recipe

    What’s better than a juicy filet mignon? Why a filet wrapped in bacon of course. Chef Yankel has a great recipe for a luxurious dinner — made all the better with our grass-fed ButcherBox beef — featuring bacon-wrapped filets. His “Bacon Wrapped Filet with Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes and Mushroom Red Wine Sauce” is the perfect dinner for two.

  3. Bacon-stuffed Pork Chops bacon-recipe

    The folks at Smoked n’ Grilled have concocted a pork masterpiece: The “Bacon-and-Asiago-stuffed Pork Chops” recipe is simple and packed with rich flavor. Use our ButcherBox heritage-breed pork chops and our thick, smoky bacon, and you cannot go wrong with this dish.

  4. The Ultimate Bacon Cheeseburger bacon-recipe

    Chef Yankel loves to talk about this time working at a restaurant that catered to the late-night service industry crowd. During the late night hours with a dining room packed with chefs, line cooks, and bartenders, Chef Yankel would experiment with different ways to make that quintessential American food, the cheeseburger, just a little bit better. The fruits of his labors resulted in this amazing, bacon-heavy recipe for his unique bacon cheeseburger with this recipe: “ButcherBox Bacon Burger with Chipotle-Lime Mayo.”

  5. Bacon and Sausage Patties

    bacon-recipeKristen Boehmer at Living Loving Paleo has done the unimaginable. She has created the perfect recipe for combining all of our favorite breakfast flavors: Bacon, sausage, and maple. Check out her easy recipe for “Maple Bacon Sausage Patties,” and thank us later.

  6. Bacon and Swiss Quiche bacon-recipe The best way to cook breakfast in the morning is to prepare it the night before. Chef Yankel’s “Bacon and Swiss Quiche,” is an easy recipe to get ahead of the game while hosting a big brunch or just lazily heading into Sunday morning.

Now that you are armed with the greatest bacon recipes, all you need to do is get your hands on some smoky bacon.

bacon-recipes

bacon candy

Bacon candy – A sweet meat treat for brunch, snack, or cocktail hour

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Like most everyone who enjoys a treat now and then, we here at ButcherBox have a bit of a sweet tooth.

It might be a bit odd to hand out candied bacon — or pig candy as it’s known in different parts of the country — to the kiddos who come to your door on Halloween. And some people might think it strange to keep some sweet candied bacon strips in the refrigerator. But here, you are among bacon lovers.

We don’t judge. We also know our taste buds don’t care if they are treated to thick-cut bacon with eggs for breakfast or at a sugar-laced version at a cocktail party in the evening.

Which is what makes bacon candy so fantastic.

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The rise of candied bacon

So let’s dig into the sweet and savory dish that is bacon candy.

These days, the traditional breakfast meat has developed a bit of a cultish following. Bacon is everywhere from the Bacon and Beer festival in Boston — which sells out very quickly each year and has expanded nationally — to bacon-themed food trucks to a featured role at almost any Bloody Mary-heavy brunch.

More and more, bacon is breaking out on its own as a singular dish, most often as bacon candy. Stop into any hip (or hipster, if you see it that way) restaurant, and you might find a glass filled with candied bacon adorning the bar.

The flavor of bacon candy combines the already savory taste of bacon and adds brown sugar or pure maple syrup and maybe a touch of chili powder. The fact that it can sit out at room temperature for hours or be kept chilled for weeks makes bacon candy the perfect snack food.

This phenomenon isn’t just occurring at trend-setting locales either; you are as likely to find candied bacon replacing the usual bowl of mixed nuts everywhere from your local steakhouse to a high-end hotel bar.

Bacon candy springs from the cocktail party circuit

So how did this trend start?

According to author Fred Thomspon, who chronicles all sorts of bacon-themed culinary delights in his cookbook “Bacon,” the history of this delicious snack is a bit of a mystery.

Bacon candy is believed to have first gained popularity in Washington, D.C.’s party circuit. But Thompson speculates that pig candy was most likely an import to the nation’s capital brought from the kitchen of an unknown Southern hostess.

The rise in the treat’s current popularity as bar food is linked, by a number of different people, to a small wine bar in California. According to lore, Lou’s on Vine in Hollywood began offering their take on pig candy to patrons as an alternative snack, and the buzz — and bacon — spread from there.

How to cook bacon candy

After all this talk of sweet bacon, you might be wondering how you can make it on your own. Worry not, the recipe is quite simple. Many candied bacon recipes call for baking the pork with a garnish of light brown sugar and/or maple syrup.

Twists on the dish include adding some spices, like ground black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes or chili powder to create the ultimate cocktail party snack, brunch side, or anytime food.

Check out the video below of ButcherBox Head Chef Yankel Polak making some bacon candy with maple syrup, sriracha, brown sugar, ground black pepper, and coconut aminos:

Here is another great bacon candy recipe that is one of the more popular recipes found at AllRecipes. It is made even better using ButcherBox bacon that comes from heritage-breed pigs.

Bacon Candy Recipe

Ingredients:

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

Ground black pepper to taste

1 pound ButcherBox bacon

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Mix brown sugar, rice vinegar, maple syrup and ground black pepper in a small bowl.

3. Place bacon slices on a cooling rack set over a baking sheet.

4. Cook in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, turn slices and bake another 5 minutes.

5. Remove bacon and brush both sides with brown sugar mixture. Return bacon to the oven and bake another 5 minutes. Repeat basting every 5 minutes until bacon is browned and crisp, a total cooking time of about 35 minutes.

6. Let sit on a cooling or wire rack at room temperature.

After letting it rest, eat and enjoy the sweet, bacon goodness!

chicken and waffles

Chicken and waffles: A history and our easy recipe

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Don’t miss our ButcherBox recipe for “Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Gluten Free Waffles (Organic Free Range Chicken)” at the bottom of the page.

Many of our favorite modern dishes are the product of culinary cultures colliding.

“Pizza Margherita,” a flatbread that featured tomatoes and cheese, is believed first to have been served in Naples, Italy in the 18th century — only after the introduction of tomatoes from America. Cheeseburgers are the result of German-American immigrants taking a traditional “Hamburg steak” and placing it on bread for convenience. Spaghetti noodles’ arrival in Italy by way of China, Korean tacos with kimchi and bulgogi…the combinations are endless.

Which brings us to the fantastic delight that is “Chicken and Waffles.”

Fried chicken — boneless or not — piled on top of a fluffy waffle with some melted butter and maple syrup is as American as it comes.

First, having bacon, sausage, and ham — or Canadian bacon — isn’t enough for us, so we had to come up with a new way to jam some more meat into our breakfast. Innovation!

Second, even though a breakfast food, we’ve found a way to incorporate chicken and waffles beyond the diner. It has evolved into something with a bit more cache than your standard quiche or breakfast burrito. For instance, chicken and waffles is a regular pass around dish at many cocktail events these days. At places like the Lower East Side’s Root & Bone and Brooklyn’s Sweet Chicks in New York, the dish can be found on dinner menus for between $17 and $25. Boston’s well-known Myers + Chang features their own take on chicken and “ginger” waffles, which is one of the hotspot’s more popular dishes.

History of “Chicken and Waffles”

Before digging into the background of this delectable combo, first we need to trace the origins of waffles and fried chicken in the U.S.

According to lore, waffles in America can be traced back to the arrival of the Pilgrims in Plymouth. As the story goes, the Pilgrims were introduced to the dish while exiled in Holland before heading to the New World. Waffles became more prominent after the Dutch populated what is now New York, bringing with them “wafles.” However, the figure credited with the widespread popularity and acceptance of the breakfast treat in America is none other than founding father Thomas Jefferson, who is believed to have brought one of the first waffle irons to the U.S. after discovering the apparatus in France.

The story of fried chicken’s birth in the U.S. is more complicated and entwined with the history of slavery in the South. A recent Atlantic feature, “As American as Fried Chicken,” does better than I could at digging into the complex background of the dish and its place in soul food traditions.

How Southern soul food and Dutch/Belgian culinary traditions came to be conjoined in one delicious dish is not necessarily agreed upon by food historians. Some point to the popularity of something known as Dutch “waffle frolics” in the South, at which African-Americans fused many of their cultural cooking traditions — including spiced chicken — with waffles or pancake-like crepes. Others believe that jazz-age Harlem was the birthplace of chicken and waffles as we know the dish today.

There is also another completely separate tradition of Pennsylvania Dutch chicken and waffles that uses a pulled or stewed chicken dinner as opposed to fried chicken piled on top of waffles with gravy.

While the origins are disputed, the popularity of the dish is undeniable.

How to cook “Chicken and Waffles”

These days, you can find many different takes on chicken and waffles. In Nashville, the dish is combined with the city’s signature “hot chicken,” and versions of chicken and waffles with Buffalo chicken can be found at gastro pubs and restaurants in almost every city in America. Chicken and waffles with chocolate, gravy, variants of maple syrup, hot sauce, and more are widely available, and recipes abound for the dish. You can use a whole chicken, chicken tenders, or chicken breast, and can prepare it southern chicken-style or how ever you wish. Just make sure your chicken is golden brown and that you follow a fluffy, crispy waffle recipe.

Our in-house ButcherBox chef Yankel Polak has his own take on the dish. His “Gluten-Free Chix ‘n Waffles” recipe is one of the most popular among our ButcherBox recipes. You can check Chef Yankel out in the video below and find the recipe at the bottom of this page.

Chef Yankel suggests pairing this delicious, healthy dish with “a smoky maple syrup for the ultimate flavor bomb.” And make sure to have your waffle iron and a Dutch oven or a deep skillet handy!

Chef Yankel’s Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Gluten Free Waffles (Organic Free Range Chicken)”

Prep time is about 30 minutes and cook time 40 minutes. This recipe serves six.

Ingredients:

  • 1 ButcherBox Whole Chicken, cut into 10 pieces

Marinade

  • 3 cups buttermilk
  • 1 tsp dry thyme
  • 1 tsp dry sage
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • ½ tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt

Coating

  • 2 c almond flour
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • 3 c gluten-free 1-1 flour
  • 2 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 1 Tbsp black pepper
  • ½ tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 c coconut oil, for frying
  • 1 c ghee, for frying

Waffles

  • 2 eggs
  • 2 c gluten-free 1-1 flour
  • 1 ¾ c milk
  • 4 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp kosher salt
  • ½ c coconut oil
  • ¼ c chives, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp maple syrup
  • 1 vanilla bean, just seeds

Directions:

Marinade

  1. Place chicken pieces in a large or medium bowl with buttermilk and all marinade ingredients. Mix well, cover and refrigerate for 8 – 24 hrs.

Fried Chicken

  1. Place 1 c ghee and 1 c coconut oil into Dutch oven. Place on medium flame and preheat oil to 350°F.
  2. Place almond flour, egg and 1-1 flour in 3 separate dishes.
  3. Remove chicken from buttermilk mix and place on wire rack to drain.
  4. Gently coat each piece of chicken, first in almond flour, then egg, then 1-1 flour and set on pan.
  5. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  6. Place 4 pieces of chicken in fat and fry for 2-3 min on each side or until lightly golden brown. Move to baking sheet. Repeat for remaining chicken.
  7. Place chicken in the oven and continue to cook until thermometer inserted into thickest part registers 165°F, about 20 min.

Waffles

  1. Crack eggs in medium to small bowl and whisk until frothy, about 3 min.
  2. Add remaining waffle ingredients and whisk gently until just mixed. Don’t overmix the batter – it should be chunky!
  3. Grease waffle iron and cook waffles as directed or until golden-brown.
  4. Serve with your favorite maple syrup and a little sriracha or other hot sauce!  

 

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