Carolina Chicken Bog
A stick-to-your-ribs South Carolina chicken stew
DISCLAIMER: This is definitely NOT an authentic or legitimate post about carolina chicken bog.
I hardly eat meat these days; something about animal fat puts me off. Too much makes my gag reflex act up - am I letting on too much? I much prefer having a plant-based diet. Maybe because my job revolves around tasting copious amounts of butter- and sugar-laden products, and my body simply can’t handle much more fat. But! The occasional thought of a burger does send me to Shake Shack (the herb chicken one, not the regular cheeseburger. it’s their best, don’t fight me).
Chicken is never really something I crave. I’m more of a pork gal. But in the past couple of weeks, I’ve just been feeling like I want to cook chicken and have come to really love it.
The worst parts about cooking chicken are, in some combination or all of the stated:
the marination/brining time - some of my favourite recipes call for a wet brine for at least a day, or wet brining and then air drying, or dry-brining/salting for 24h ahead of time;
the painful and anxiety-inducing process of searing for golden-brown goodness. Not to mention the half an hour of cleaning oil splatters from the stove and floor (!!! but yes this applies to other proteins too);
the hours of simmering, albeit for an unparalleled pot of stock.
Anyhoo, the other day I wanted to cook a braised chicken dish very last-minute, and didn’t have time to do any brining. I do have several recipes that I revisit time and again, but in the effort to learn and try new things, I thought I should cook a new dish. A Google search led me to Serious Eats’ Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs with Cabbage and Bacon which sounded fantastic (and which is sitting in my “To Cook” bookmarks folder with a hundred other bookmarks), but wasn’t what I was looking for flavour-wise. There were also suggestions of chicken cacciatore or an Italian-American braise. But I wanted something less herb-y and tomato-y, more stick-to-your-ribs.
I flipped open the NYT Essential Cookbook and searched the index for chicken, which is when I found “Carolina Chicken Bog”. Bog?? What IS that?
Google’s definition of “bog”:
an area of wet muddy ground that is too soft to support a heavy body.
Which gives you an idea of what this dish is like. It is a South Carolina specialty which, like most native dishes, has slight variations in the recipe across the state. Most recipes online mention that it is a one-pot dish with chicken, rice and smoked sausage cooked in chicken stock, similar to a pilaf but much wetter.
The NYT recipe I followed, on the other hand, does not feature rice in the dish. The recipe by Robert Stehling, owner of Hominy Grill in S.C. and James Beard Award Winner, has you cook down a mountain of peppers and onions in some bacon fat, along with celery and garlic.
Deglaze all of that with tomatoes and wine, then thicken with a roux.
His recipe also features chicken gizzards, heart and liver, and cubes of chicken thigh. It is finally finished with mustard and vinegar, which reminded me of devil’s curry or Kari Debal!!
Devil’s curry is a Kristang dish with origins from Malacca, usually made on boxing day or after Christmas, using leftovers from the Christmas feast. Of course, devil’s curry is wildly different in flavour, being cooked in a fiery rempah (a spice paste made with aromatics). But I feel like there are some similarities: smokiness in the dish from bacon, offcuts/leftovers, sausages and tang from finishing with mustard and vinegar.
I adapted the recipe quite a bit, searing chicken thighs first, getting that schmaltzy goodness (more on the beauty of schmaltz in another post). Just looking at this picture makes me want to eat some chicken. I negated all of the other chicken bits, because I’ll be honest - I’m not that much of a fan.
I also added smoked paprika because my mind just associates that with Southern foods. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who has never had authentic Southern food so please don’t hate. I really hope to experience Southern food fatigue one day.
I think the roux went in after this for a couple of minutes, and then the chicken and sausages. I used pork cocktails because that’s all I could find, but I would seek out smoked sausages the next round. It is then finished with apple cider vinegar and a healthy dose of dijon. I used sherry because that’s what I had, but I used less than the recipe called for, I think. Because this stew is CHUNKY and thickened with roux, it does require frequent stirring so the bottom doesn’t catch. I had my heat on very low but it did catch towards the end and I had some carcinogenic bits in my stew, but I can assure you a micro bit of a health tradeoff is worth it.
This was every bit delicious. Slightly smoky (from the paprika), caramelised and buttery from the roux, complexity from the wine, bright (but not too bright) from the tomatoes. Nice heft from cooked down vegetables. It sure hit the spot.
I would salt my chicken for at least 2-3 hours (6 hours would be pleasing, 12 hours would be excellent) in advance in the future, just because the chicken gets a short simmer and doesn’t absorb all the flavour. Or, I would cook this a day ahead of devouring. This was the kind of plate you want to sit down to after a long week.
Plus point: leftover bog keeps super well, not that you weren’t expecting it to! If you have leftover pepper base like I did, just salt some chicken legs, pan sear them, then throw them into the base for another delightful plate of bog the next day.
If you’ve reached the end of my rambling, thank you for your attention span and time. And I hope you try making some bog. If you’d like to read about me rambling on about (chicken stock) the next time…
Bisous!
M.