North Carolina Pulled Chicken and Slaw Sliders
If you are feeling lazy and don't want to drive over to Smithfield BBQ to pick up BBQ sandwiches, you can go the easy way and substitute a store-bought chicken instead. Try it - we guarantee you'll like it!
Slaw
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup chopped green onion
- 2 tablespoons dill pickle juice (from a jar of pickles)
- 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
- fresh-ground black pepper
- 1 16-ounce package shredded cole slaw mix
Chicken
- 1 cup bottled barbecue sauce (your preference - we love Sweet Baby Rays)
- 3 tablespoons cider vinegar
- 3 cups roughly shredded rotisserie chicken
Durkee's French Fried Onion Rings and 12 slider buns
To prepare the slaw, whisk all ingredients together, except cole slaw mix, in a large bowl. Add cole slaw mix and toss to coat. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
To prepare chicken, combine barbecue sauce, vinegar and chicken in a bowl. Microwave about 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated.
To serve, place chicken on bun bottoms. Spoon slaw of top of chicken. Top off with onion rings. Place remaining bun halves on top.
12 servings.
Graham Cracker Cake
We like to use Graham Crackers in a lot of desserts. For a yummy, crunchy sweet-salty taste, sprinkle turbinado sugar and sea salt of top. You want to serve this cake with ice cream, lemon sorbet or frozen yogurt.
- 6 tablespoons butter, softened
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 3 cracker sheets)
- 3/4 cup brown sugar cookie crumbs (about 20 cookies - or just all graham cracker crumbs if you like)
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 teaspoon turbinado sugar (optional)
- 1/2 teaspoon seat salt (optional)
- cooking spray
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a deep 9-inch cake pan or 9-inch springform pan with cooking spray. Combine butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Beat with a mixer until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well blended. Combine graham cracker crumbs, cookie crumbs, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add crumb mixture to butter mixture, alternately with buttermilk, beating until well blended. Scrape batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle top with turbinado sugar and sea salt, if using.
Bake 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack 10 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely.
Serves 12.
Wooly Worms
Here in North Carolina we have a lot of folk tales about predicting the weather. I'm sure ya'll have a few of your own. One of the most sure fire ways we have of weather prediction is by looking at a Wooly Worm. The Wooly Worm is one of the most beautiful caterpillars you will ever see. They are about 2 inches long and have a fuzzy covering that almost looks like fur. The 'fur' is in alternating bands of different shades of brown, up to, and including black. Usually you will see the Wooly Worms in the early fall and the intensity of the colors and the size of the different bands will tell you what to expect that winter, if you know how to read them.
Well, last fall, a year ago I was out walking in my beloved Dismal Swamps. I do so enjoy those swamps and had stopped to rest a bit. I was sitting on a huge sweet gum tree that had been blown over in the last hurricane, when I saw the largest Wooly Worm I, personally, have ever seen, coming down the trail towards me. He was about 30 yards away and I could see that he was about 3 feet long and at least 3 inches wide. I was absolutely amazed. I had never even heard of a Wooly worm that size, much less ever seen one. I stayed right still and watched him keep coming. The closer he got the bigger he looked. Finally he got close enough for me to make him out pretty good. What it was, was a dern snake coming down the path with a bunch of little traps thrown over his shoulder. He had been out trapping Wooly Worms and then skinned them out and made himself a fur coat. To show you that this is the absolute truth, that winter we had a 2-foot snowfall. The largest in our history.
