Boss Chicken Sandwich

Yesterday I made up a batch of Macheesmo boss sauce – a tangy, spicy barbeque sauce with some mustard, vinegar, and habanero peppers.  For experiment one with the sauce, I slathered a pork chop with it.  That was a huge success.  But that left me with like 1/2 gallon of sauce so I decided to get creative.

And so I introduce to you the boss shredded chicken sandwich.

I know that pulled pork is a much more traditional sandwich, but chicken isn’t given enough credit.  It can be an awesome sandwich and it takes about 1/5 the time to make pulled chicken instead of pulled pork.  If roasted correctly, the chicken is still very moist and is a great vehicle for the sauce.  Which is good because really it’s all about the sauce for this sandwich.

Roasting the chicken. I didn’t do anything special to this chicken other than give it a coat of olive oil and a good dose of salt and pepper.  Keep in mind that we are going to be shredding this guy and slathering with boss sauce.  So no need to do anything fancy at this point.

I roasted my chicken in my big cast iron pot, but you could do it in a normal baking dish if you wanted.  Be sure to let the chicken sit for 15-20 minutes at room temperature before cooking it.  This resting gives the chicken a bit of time to come up to room temperature which will mean that it will cook faster and stay moist.

Roast it at 425 degrees for about 50-60 minutes.  Take the chicken out after 25 minutes and flip it so the breast is down.  Then after 25 more minutes, flip it one more time.  That will just ensure that the chicken cooks evenly.

The chicken should be done after an hour if you have a 4 pound bird.  It should register about 165-170 in the thigh area.  Now the USDA says that a rull chicken should be cooked to 180 degrees before being safe, but the temp will raise about 10 degrees after you take it out of the oven and let it rest.

At the end of the day though, if you overcook this guy a little it won’t be the end of the world.  The saucing will eliminate any dryness.  So don’t stress about it too much.

Let this chicken cool for at least half an hour.  It will be way to hot to work with if you don’t let it cool.  Then just pull the chicken apart and shred it!  Don’t be afraid to get dirty here.  I wouldn’t use any of the skin, but all the other meat is good meat for shredding!  You’ll probably get close to two pounds of shredded chicken off of one bird.

Then add in about 2 Cups of Macheesmo boss sauce and give it a good stir.  Taste it and adjust.  For my version, I added a large pinch of salt, a tad more cayenne, and some pepper.

This was some good stuff.

The only way to serve this is on a toasted hamburger bun!  You may want to add a bit more sauce to the top of the sandwich.  No other condiments are necessary.

Given that it is boss sauce, I took some in to work and gave a sandwich to my boss!  It was a hit.

This amount of chicken made me 8 very large sandwiches with a bit of leftovers.  The chicken is good hot or cold actually, but in my opinion the bun should always be toasted.

I think next I need to work on Give-me-a-raise Sauce… That one might be trickier to nail down.