Cousin Eddie’s Chicken

Cousin Eddie’s Chicken–tender and moist chicken with Carolina barbecue sauce made fast in your Instant Pot or slow and low in your Crockpot.

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Cousin Eddie’s Chicken

Some of Greg’s siblings are big fans of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and of course Cousin Eddie with all his idiosyncrasies. So when I saw a recipe for Cousin Eddie’s Chicken I had to give it a try! The recipe name comes from the BBQ sauce that is used. I ordered a bottle online because I had to know what it tasted like. It is a delicious sauce that has a mild taste (not too strong or too sweet). It’s a Carolina sauce made with apple cider vinegar and tomato sauce. The interesting part about the sauce is that it is very thin. It is not a thick sauce like Stubbs or Sweet Baby Ray’s. It’s more of the consistency of a salad dressing (like Italian dressing). I really liked the sauce! If you don’t have access to the sauce you can sub a different carolina sauce or make your own from scratch.

Ingredients/Substitution Ideas

• Chicken broth–or water and Better than Bouillon
• Boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs–I do half and half and they were frozen
• Kosher salt
• Cousin Eddie’s BBQ Sauce–this is a very thin BBQ sauce that is tomato based. It’s almost like the consistency of a marinade. It doesn’t have a ton of sweetness to it but it has lots of flavor. You can use another type of high quality north carolina BBQ sauce if you’d like or make your own.

Steps

Pour broth into Instant Pot. Add in the chicken. Sprinkle chicken with salt.

Pour half of the BBQ sauce over the chicken. 

Cover Instant Pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 15 minutes on LOW pressure. When time is up let pot sit for 10 minutes and then move valve to venting and remove the lid. 

Use tongs to place the chicken on a cutting board.

Turn Instant Pot to saute (“more”) setting and let the sauce and liquid in the pot simmer and reduce down for 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile, shred or chop the chicken. Once sauce has reduced stir the chicken into the pot. Stir in the remaining barbecue sauce.

Serve the chicken and enjoy on salads, sandwiches, with baked potatoes, etc.!

Notes/Tips

• Serve the chicken on salads, sandwiches, with baked potatoes. My son loves to eat it right out of the container for “protein.” He’s obsessed with protein.
• I used my 6 quart Instant Pot*. You can also make this in a 3 or 8 quart pot.
• This recipe can easily be scaled up or down. It just depends on how much chicken you want. For chicken breasts I usually use the rule that you need a quarter pound of chicken per person. Chicken thighs seems to shrink down a lot more so you’ll need probably a third to a half pound of thighs per person.
• Store leftovers in an airtight container* in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months. This recipe is perfect for doubling and freezing leftovers for a future meal of bbq chicken flatbreads or pizzas.
• Leftover Cousin Eddie’s sauce can be used on all sorts of foods. Their website says, “Our sauces are tomato based which makes it the perfect sauce for all different kinds of foods, including vegetables, fruits, and believe it or not desserts. Of course, it’s also perfect on any kind of meat, including bear, turkey, deer and wild hog. It’s a sauce that isn’t so over bearing that you can’t taste the food you have put it on or in.”

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*Karen Petersen is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.