Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Sweet Baby Ray’s Crockpot Chicken. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.  The original recipe can be found over at Just a Pinch.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice. I’ll be interested what prompted this choice, because I have my suspicions. What suspicions, you ask? Well. I think Nance was like “This recipe looks really simple and it will make Amanda’s head blow clean off her shoulders at the idea that we’re referring to this as a recipe.”

That’s right – I think Nance is Amanda-baiting. Which, don’t get me wrong – I’m ALL for Amanda-baiting. I bet Amanda’s nostrils are flaring in anticipation of how much this is NOT a recipe and doesn’t meet her high standards. I bet Amanda wears a headband and cardigans and has her hair straightened to within an inch of its life. Amanda’s hair wouldn’t dare stray out of place for one instant or she’d just pluck the offending hair right out of her head. Amanda, I think I’m saying, has stringent and rigid standards regarding what is and is not a recipe.

ANYway. (I bet Amanda hates it when I say “ANYway.”)(Also probably not a fan of parentheses.)

Your ingredients (“Not MY ingredients,” Amanda is saying.)

Chicken breasts, white vinegar, brown sugar, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder. Also, a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. Fred was in charge of buying the Sweet Baby Ray’s (I had kittens to cuddle), and he reported that there was nothing that was JUST plain regular barbecue sauce, they had 30 different variations, so he bought the one that looked the best to him, the Sweet ‘n Spicy (Amanda: “Grrr! Sweet AND Spicy. AND.”)

Those chickens breasts are store-bought. After the last time we used our home-grown chicken in a recipe and then didn’t like it, Fred declared that from then on out if we were making a recipe for the first time and weren’t sure if we’d like it, we’d use store-bought because it is a mortal sin to use home-grown chicken for meals that we end up not liking. He’s so bossy and forceful, that Fred.

The recipe calls for 4 – 6 chicken breasts, but store-bought chicken breasts are so damn big that I’m not sure 6 of them would have fit in the crockpot, for the love of Sweet Baby Jesus (see what I did there?)

Okay, put your chicken breasts in the crockpot.

Mix all the other ingredients together. I used a big measuring cup so that pouring it over the chicken breasts would be easier.

I had to get a little violent because my garlic powder was all clumped together in one big, uh, CLUMP. I suspect that bottle of garlic powder is about as old as I am. Yes, I know you’re supposed to replace your herbs and spices regularly. I don’t give a shit. You’re also not supposed to keep them over the stove where they’re subjected to heat. What, I don’t spend enough time pampering cats, dogs, and chickens, I need to pamper my goddamn spices, too? Fuck that.

“The Prince will have a light snack after his nap and before his massage. Also, be sure that the masseuse isn’t all chatty. The Prince hates it when they’re chatty. Just rub the toes and shut UP, you know?”

(Sorry about that watermark being all up in his face. I have a real problem with people stealing my pictures, using them without attribution, and then suggesting that I should be grateful for it. Oh, don’t get me STARTED. And that picture, I’m sorry – SO FREAKIN’ CUTE. I was half tempted to plaster the watermark across his damn forehead.)

Dump the barbecue sauce, etc over your chicken breasts.

Cook it on low, 4 – 6 hours. When given a range like that I usually split the difference (5 hours), but I was a little late in getting it all in the crockpot, so it only cooked for 4 hours.

This is what it looked like right before I put the lid on the crockpot. It looked pretty much the same after 4 hours.

And this is after I removed the chicken breasts from the liquid.

I was going to slice the chicken breast and ARRANGE it and take an artsy-fartsy picture, but the chicken pretty much shredded as I cut it, so you get this.

The verdict? Meh. Totally meh. Like, meh minus. The chicken was dry, and just… meh. Fred felt the same. I wouldn’t waste any home-grown chicken on this recipe. The sauce was good and might be better on something else, but I won’t make this recipe again. Life’s too short for meh chicken.

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Nance’s Take:

I’m from Pennsylvania and there’s no way in hell I would try to make my own barbecue sauce. People in the south know their shit when it comes to barbecue and this yankee prefers to just enjoy the good stuff when I visit. But I do use barbecue sauce in a bottle sometimes.  I stick with Sweet Baby Ray’s or KC Masterpiece. I do not like Kraft’s Barbecue Sauce because it tastes like the stuff I threw up that one time I was mixing tequila with beer.  In the same glass.  Glass after glass after glass…

Everybody’s different and I’m not going to judge (this time), but I have been known to pitch a hiss if the husband brings home that cheap Kraft Barbecue shit just because I forgot to specify a brand on the grocery list. Goodbye, Kraft Sponsorship! Heh.

I picked this recipe because a) I recognized the name b) it looked easy and c) it was made in a crockpot. There are days when I can’t be bothered to stop what I’m doing to make dinner. Especially if I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out if Amanda Bynes is crazy or just has a vicious drug problem.

A crockpot meal is the perfect solution for, ahem, busy people like me.

I just realized that this picture makes it look like I don’t know how to spell the word chicken. I do. When I’m packing up a butt-load of chicken (we buy in bulk because I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna chop the head off a live one!) I sometimes get lazy about my penmanship. These chicken breasts have been cut into smaller sizes because we’re controlling portions.   Some of us eat the leftovers for lunch the next day so it all works out.  I just told you that in case you were dividing the chicken by the number of people in this house and were getting confused.  You’re welcome.

Crybaby Felina didn’t want to be up on the counter with the Barbecue Sauce.

Here she is walking away from the situation because I had a dilema and she was over it.  I didn’t know the amount of barbecue sauce I should use since my bottle said 50% more free. I couldn’t decide if I should only use half of the bottle or just dump the whole thing in there and hope for the best. This recipe would have been more helpful if it had included what size bottle for chrissakes.

Of course Sadie Mae was all about posing for DCEP because she’s the good one. If you look real close, you can see where I had her toenails (front paws only) painted a lovely shade of metallic blue. She drags the top of her feet across the cement on our porch when she walks (arthritis/old age) and it just plum ruined her manicure.  The look on her face tells me that she doesn’t care.  At all.

Remember when Pizza Hut was just new and they had glass shaker bottles of this stuff on their tables? I would sprinkle it all over my pizza and it was fabulous. Now? I don’t eat Pizza Hut because…barf. Bye, bye Pizza Hut Sponsorship!  Truth Game:  When I left home to live in Washington, DC at the grand old age of 18, Shirley stole a shaker while we ate at Pizza Hut so I would have one in my new apartment.  Shirley.  STOLE.

Robyn’s probably getting ready to kill me by now.  Trash talking possible sponsors and sharing my mother’s criminal past.  Whee!

This is what everything looked like when I threw it all into a bowl. I know you’re impressed. I ended up using about 3/4 of the bottle since my brain gave up wondering what could possibly go wrong.  Who gives a shit?

Action shot taken by Shirley (aka: mom). You can also see where I deviated from the recipe because I sprinkled pepper (not salt) on the chicken and sprayed the shit out of the crockpot with cooking spray.   Pro-tip:  Pepper the hell out of the sides of the crockpot so you look like an idiot.

Another action shot because Shirley was all proud of herself.

This is what I ended up with.  I will tell you where I screwed up – I fucked around so much that I ended up having to cook it on high for a bit in order to have it in time for dinner. Cooking that shit on high made it DRY. VERY, VERY DRY. Hard to believe when you see that picture up there, huh? Yup. I suppose you could lick it if you don’t want to deal with that whole dry thing.  But I’m pretty sure bending over and licking your chicken at the dinner table is frowned upon.

But here’s the very best part of all…

IT SUCKED! Blech. The recipe took a perfectly good barbecue sauce and turned it into a very poor imitation of that cheap-ass Kraft shit that I hate so much. No lie! The fuck with all that vinegar? Are you kidding me? Who wants to take a perfectly decent barbecue sauce and make it taste like swill? I was so freaking disappointed. This recipe needs to be flushed.  Immediately.