The Secret Ingredient For A Perfect BBQ Chicken Sandwich Is In The Spice

As temperatures turn cooler and fall sets in, you're likely tempted to transition from the grill to the slow cooker. If you like BBQ chicken off the grill, then slow cooker BBQ chicken will blow your socks off. "This recipe is about medium difficulty since you have to make your own homemade BBQ sauce," says Mashed recipe developer Kristen Carli. When creating this dish, they used a blend of four seasonings in the homemade sauce. 

Yes, you can use store-bought sauce for this recipe in a pinch. Most grocery stores offer dozens of different varieties of BBQ sauce, many of which are delicious and will save you time. However, your best bet is to make it from scratch because you can be precise about creating the flavor profile. The slow cooker is ideal for BBQ chicken because it cooks the meat at a low temperature for several hours, imparting top-tier tenderness with little effort. 

The sugar and spice and everything nice that goes into BBQ sauce boil down to a few basic ingredients. Aside from the foundation of ketchup, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and Worcestershire, you need a few dried seasonings to enhance the flavor notes in your sauce.

For this BBQ chicken, grab the onion powder, paprika, black pepper, and salt out of your spice cabinet. Combine them with the other sauce ingredients in a saucepan to marry the flavors. Simmer those ingredients for about 15 minutes. Then, the sauce is ready to go in the slow cooker with chicken breasts for four hours.

When it's time, remove the chicken from the slow cooker and shred it. "I love shredding chicken in the stand mixer, but you could use two forks if you want as well," Kristen Carli says. Your guests will be impressed with the complexity of the flavors in this BBQ sandwich.