My Mother’s Homemade BBQ Sauce For Chicken

{affiliate links included}

I had some chicken in the fridge.

And I had some chicken recipes I wanted to try. {One of them was this Alfredo Bake I mentioned over in the Farmhouse Chit-Chat post.}

I’d been in withdrawal for my Traeger. We just hadn’t grilled for a while. Blame everything on BACK ISSUES, but that was one reason I hadn’t pulled Mr. Traeger out and flung open the lid in quite a while. Well, and winter. That’s a mild excuse though, because we had a mild winter and it’s really very doable to use our Traeger if we want to.

Well, so there’s this chicken in the fridge.

Mrs. Cook of the Kitchen {which would be moi} decides to whip up a double batch of her mama’s homemade BBQ sauce and grill all the chicken and feed her family a yummy chicken lunch and then use some of the chicken in recipes-waiting-to-be-made. {Cause I’m all organized like that.} {On a good day.}{And an occasional one.}

When I was very young, my parents would host a yearly chicken BBQ, as we called them, each summer. My aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and a great-aunt and uncle or two, would all come and bring side dishes and homemade ice cream and we would play and eat and laugh and visit in the summertime heat. My mother would make recipes of this BBQ sauce and my dad would don the apron and chef’s hat she’d made for him. He would line his homemade BBQ pit with chicken pieces and mother would bring out the pan of sauce. The smoke would curl up from the bed of charcoal and my dad would brush and dab each piece of chicken with the sauce, causing more smoke to erupt when the sauce splashed onto the charcoal briquettes.

The aroma of this sauce instantly transports me back. I see my mother standing and stirring this sauce in her kitchen at the harvest gold countertop.

I can feel the humid summertime evening and I picture familiar faces. I close my eyes and there I am, looking through the pan of chicken for that perfect drumstick. It had to be a chicken leg! No piece of chicken even compared with a chicken leg! I can feel it between my fingers as I pick it up and bite into it. The juice runs and my fingers are smeared with black from the grill marks. Delicious!

Opening my eyes, I’m back to present day and my own pretty kitchen. And there’s this chicken in the fridge, waiting! And I’m stirring up BBQ sauce. Ah, yes! I remember!

Out the chicken goes and out comes the pan of BBQ sauce and my brush and I begin to splash the chicken pieces. The chicken looks so pretty as the Traeger hums and slowly turns it golden. I take a picture to post on Instagram and I include these words,

Golden Chicken on the grill,
Golden sunshine’s rays do spill,
Golden moments pause and fill,
Golden days, my heart will thrill.

A friend asks me for the recipe and I reply later, and tell her I will add it to my recipes on my blog and let her know.

It’s nothing fancy. It’s not a hugely strong flavor. It’s very simple. It’s yummy.

I’ve poured it on chicken and let it marinate in it sometimes.

If you want something spicier, you could use this as a base and add your tastes to it.

What aromas and foods flood you with memories?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2016