Beer and BBQ Pulled Chicken Sandwiches

I was at a party a few nights ago and someone was discussing the awesomeness of chicken cooked in beer and barbecue sauce.  I've always wanted to try a pulled meat recipe that included beer.  Cooking with wine is fun, so why not beer?  I searched the internet for a good crockpot recipe and found one with only a few ingredients.  This meal requires very little prep work and could be tossed into the slow cooker in less than 10 minutes.  But that's no fun!  Instead, I made my own BBQ sauce.  The recipe suggests that a thinner sauce is better for cooking the chicken, so I didn't leave mine on the stove for very long.  After I poured some in the slow cooker, I let it cook more to thicken it to my desired consistency.  The BBQ sauce I made freezes well.  If I was in a hurry, I'd just use a bottled sauce.  The chicken is amazing! The meat didn't taste like a chicken drowned in beer, it was a very mild flavor that went really well with the BBQ sauce.  My sauce isn't overly sweet, which I think is a good match for the beer.  The smoked paprika gave it a slight kick. After 8 hours in the slow cooker, the chicken required zero effort to shred.  When it was completely cooked, it took about five minutes to shred, mix with the sauce, and put on a bun.  This is a great dish for a work night if you can get it in the slow cooker in the morning (and it has a keep warm setting).  It's also great for leftovers.  I served it on an onion roll with some foil baked corn on the cob and a small salad.

BBQ Beef Brisket with Grilled Salt and Vinegar Potatoes

I figure I'll start off with a tried and true recipe that, while I don't make very often, is always very tasty.  When my husband and I got married, his family put together a box filled with recipes from their family and friends.  This brisket was one of them. Unless I'm experimenting on friends, I usually cook for two.  So, I scale a lot of recipes to avoid waste; leftovers tend to sit in the fridge until they achieve consciousness.  This recipe is unusual, in that it makes good leftovers that I actually ate.  I brought them to work for lunch.  The original recipe called for 4 lbs of beef for 8 people, so I wanted 1 lb for the two of us.  The smallest piece Wegman's had was 5 lbs, but they cut it in half for us.  I love sauce, so I went ahead and made the full recipe instead of scaling it for two. 

The home made BBQ sauce is the focus of this dish.  I've tweaked the sauce a little because I feel like 1 tsp of chili powder is never enough.  Celery seeds are a very important part of this sauce's flavor.  The sauce freezes well for future use.  Aside from needing to cook for 3+ hours, this recipe doesn't involve a lot of work.  The sauce is very easy to make. I decided to top my sandwich with some caramelized onion.  This was the first time I've done this, and it worked really well!

I paired the brisket with some grilled salt and vinegar potatoes.  For most of my life, I thought potatoes were the Devil's Tuber, but more recently I've been trying to eat them more.  I like potatoes when they are seasoned well or have some kind of extra flavor added to them.  I still can't eat them plain or even worse, mashed (yuck!).  This recipe caught my eye because it looked like a healthier alternative to my favorite type of potato chip: salt and vinegar.  While they smelled good, these were a bit of a disappointment.   They were quite limp despite the extra time they spent in the grill pan.  Perhaps it's because I used my grill pan instead of my real grill.  Maybe they needed significantly more time because they were larger potatoes.  Regardless, they didn't cook for long enough or the pan didn't do as good of a job as a real grill.  I suspect that 1/4 inch is too thick.  Next time I attempt these, I'll set my mandoline to 1/8 and see if that improves the texture, or use smaller potatoes if I can find them.  I'll definitely try them again because I love vinegar and grilling is a healthier alternative to frying or eating potato chips.