Level Up Any Barbecue Chicken Recipe With An Unexpected Sweet Ingredient

For those of us who live in the South, warmer weather means more time spent outside, family gatherings, and ample amounts of barbecue. If we're talking about traditional barbecue, these feasts can be weekend-long events, as beef roasts, whole pigs, and chickens are often cooked over indirect heat for entire days at a time. While the chicken may take hours to cook, it's worth waiting for that first crispy, tender bite of meat.

Then comes the sauce, and let's just say, people have opinions when it comes to one of America's most popular condiments. While history points to a mixture of peppers and lime juice as one of the first barbecue "sauce" concoctions, nowadays, sweeter tomato-based sauces tend to be the most preferred variety. In a U.S.-based Daily Meal survey about the most popular bottled barbecue sauce, more than 50% chose Sweet Baby Ray's as their number-one choice. Sweet Baby Ray's features a mixture of high-fructose corn syrup, tomato paste, and pineapple juice. 

If you make homemade barbecue sauce, you need to choose which ingredients to highlight. And to make things even more complicated, each region in the United States seems to have a signature variety of sauce featuring different variations of vinegar, mustard, molasses, or tomato. Whether you opt for bottled or homemade sauce, before lathering your next slew of roasted chicken thighs, you may want to consider adding apple butter to elevate the flavor of barbecue chicken.

If you've been a fan of barbecue for quite some time, you're probably familiar with the many varieties of wood to choose from when cooking your precious chicken breasts. While hickory, pecan, and oak wood are commonly used for barbecue, apple wood is also used on occasions when you want a mildly sweet flavor added to those slow-cooked crispy morsels of meat. Interestingly enough, apple wood isn't the only part of the apple tree that benefits barbecue connoisseurs. If you're looking for a way to elevate standard barbecue chicken, you may want to try Fresh Simple Home's addition of apple butter.

For this specific version of barbecue chicken, simply mix equal ratios of barbecue sauce and apple butter. Lather most of the sauce on raw chicken pieces before baking. Once the chicken has cooked in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes, remove, serve, and use the leftover sauce as a perfect dipping accompaniment. 

If you want to make homemade barbecue sauce with apple butter, just made a basic sauce with minimal ingredients, such as this one from Char-Broil, and add the apple butter into the mix. And if you enjoy living on the edge, you can take your chicken one step further and make What's Cooking America's version, which contains Fireball whiskey.

if you're not a huge fan of apples, apple butter isn't the only ingredient you can use to upgrade barbecue chicken. For those who enjoy making homemade barbecue sauce, there are plenty of ways to change the flavor of this beloved condiment. 

Besides adding the sweet addition of apple butter or even extra vinegar, you may want to add bacon. Chef Tyler Florence not only adds a slice of bacon to his barbecue sauce, but he also soaks his chicken pieces in a brine made with brown sugar, salt, water, and thyme before cooking.

If you'd rather not add more meat into the mix, the most surefire way to produce delicious barbecue chicken each and every time is to let the chicken pieces sit in dry seasoning for an extended period of time (or up to a full day) before grilling. This dry rub creates a crispy exterior as the chicken pieces cook. When the sauce is added toward the end of the cooking time, it provides a perfect layer of moisture over the crunchy textured outer layer. 

Apple butter may be the right ingredient to add to barbecue chicken when you're in the mood for something a little more complex and sweet. But to achieve solid flavor each and every time, a well-seasoned bird is always appreciated.