How to Make Fried Peach Pies at Home and the Best Barbecue Chicken Thighs

[Music] the gong [Music] they come home [Music] today on Cook's Country Bridget and Julia share the secrets to competition caliber BBQ chicken thighs Jack challenges Bridget to a tasting of bagpack pork and brian cooks Julia and Alabama specialty fried peach pies it's all right here on Cook's Country in the world of barbecue competitions you've got to stand out to win mm-hmm you need a hook like Myron mixon's cupcake chicken now why is it called cupcake chicken Myron cooks chicken thighs on a grill for two hours in a customized cupcake pan and the finished chicken well it kind of looks like glazed little cake but setting that cutesy name aside they're serious flavor in those chicken thighs moist meat full of smokiness and shellacked with a sweet sticky glaze this is the ultimate barbecue chicken [Music] there are a lot of home cooks out there in America that think that they know how to barbecue chicken on the grill mm-hmm but today we're gonna take barbecue chicken to the next level this is not just some backyard throw it on the grill with some bottled sauce chicken ah this is competition chicken that we're gonna show you how to make today and it all starts with using the right cut of meat now here I have chicken thighs and this is four pounds of bone-in chicken thighs and as with any good barbecue we're gonna start with a rub okay and here I have my arrangement of ingredients this is beautiful it is wouldn't you want to cook and just have someone do this for you and you walk in I want to take a picture of that that's gorgeous and we're gonna start with some salt and sugar so this is one tablespoon of kosher salt and 1 tablespoon of light brown sugar we're also going to add a tablespoon of paprika and this is a teaspoon of black pepper and a teaspoon of white pepper a little one - pepper punch all right and this is three-quarters of a teaspoon of granulated garlic I'm just gonna mix this together to make sure to break up any clumps of brown sugar now I'm gonna reserve 4 teaspoons of this special spice rub for later it's a secret mmm yeah one a massage perhaps roam therapy 3 4 all right so we're gonna set this aside for later the rest of this spice rub I'm just gonna put all over this chicken mmm I'm gonna flip the chicken over and make sure we get some on the bottom when I flip it over I'm gonna move that chicken around a little bit to catch up any spices instead of falling into the pan ok so now we're gonna put the rest of this spice rub on mmm we're gonna let this chicken sit for an hour and really absorb some of that flavor meanwhile we're gonna continue on with some more mixtures because barbecue chicken this competition style chicken uses a two-step cooking method we're actually gonna braise the chicken in that disposable pan on the grill then we'll take it out of the pan and we'll grill it to finish interesting I'm gonna start off with kind of a wet cooking method really get it nice and tender and stayed good and juicy so we're starting with half a cup of chicken broth to this we're gonna add 1/2 a cup of barbecue sauce this is six cloves sliced garlic a lot of flavor mmm-hmm this is three tablespoons of Worcestershire and last but not least a little hot sauce this is two tablespoons of hot sauce a little hot sauce oh that's gonna be good that is our braising liquid and next we're gonna make a glaze because once that chicken comes out of the braising liquid we're gonna put it over the hot part of the fire and we're gonna brush it with this gorgeous glaze super glossy and Gorge it's competition chicken it is so we're gonna win mm-hmm you know it the glaze is gonna start with two tablespoons of apple jelly which I microwave by the way so it's nice and fluid we're gonna add 2 tablespoons of barbecue sauce I see a theme mm-hmm one tablespoon of light brown sugar one tablespoon of hot sauce hello and the hits just keep on coming and one minced clove of garlic now I can smell that barbecue sauce it's got a lots of smoky aroma and that's because we're using bull's eye which is our winning barbecue sauce mmm hmm give that a smell oh that's a good glaze that's a great glue you get that whiff of hot sauce at the end oh yes you do all right so we have the chicken we have the reserved spice rub we've the braising liquid we have the glaze and last but not least we're gonna get some smoke here we have one and a half cups of wood chips and of course we're gonna cover them in water and let them soak for at least 15 minutes that way they'll smoke rather than burn get them nice and a web and wood floats so I'm gonna take a little plate and put it on top to help keep them submerged in the water [Music] all right Bridget so I've been heating up this grill for about 15 minutes and what I did is I took about a cup and a half of wood chips and I put them in this cool little tray and that of course will give the chicken some good smoke flavor while it cooks if you're working at home but the different type of gas grill it doesn't have a smoker grate or you want to make this recipe on a charcoal grill don't worry just go to our website and go see our instructions for how to set up your grill now that the grill is good not it's the perfect time to give it a scrub down and of course when it's hot and anything you cooked on the grill beforehand will flake off nice and easy I'm also gonna oil the grill grates it's just always good to do that it's like seasoning a cast-iron skillet the long times are a crucial part of this procedure some paper towels and a little bit of vegetable oil and just run them over the grill grates they catch on fire it's okay that absolutely happens all the time and now it's time to turn some of these burners down because we have them all on high to heat the grill up but for cooking we're actually gonna turn two of the burners off completely it's almost like turning the grill into an oven so that the chicken can cook more slowly so it's nice and tender and also has time to really absorb that smoke flavor sounds great mm-hmm here's our chicken so it's been sitting with the spice rub for about an hour and here is our braising mixture so much flavor yeah and this is just so cool to be able to do this on the grill braised chicken so that it gets nice and tender we're gonna put the chicken on the grill and as a reminder the heats over here and the smokes here so plenty of smoke is gonna waft over the chicken so it can absorb that flavor but the pan itself is not over any heat that's because we want this to cook gently and slowly more like a simmer like a true braise not a boil the slow simmer is also gonna help that fat to render oh that's right all right mmm and that makes the good skin at the end all right all right look at the lid down and we're gonna cook this for about half an hour sounds good so we have cake pan chicken on cupcake check nice [Music] the chickens been on there for about 30 minutes let's take a look I can smell it now I can say gorgeous isn't it you can see that bubbling up no hard boil there that's right right and so the grill registers between 350 and 375 degrees now we're gonna take this pan of chicken off and now we're gonna start to put the chicken right back on the grill again on the cool side because we want to cook it slowly and want it to still absorb some more of that smoke and I'm gonna put it on the grill skin side up and now we're gonna take a little bit of this glaze it's about half of it we're gonna brush it onto the chicken and this is gonna start to make that deep glaze oh yeah and that's how you get that shellacked look that cupcake chicken is known for I'm gonna say about half of this glaze for another application later on and another little trick up my sleeve is you remember that four teaspoons of spice that I saved yes I'm gonna put it on the chicken at this point and of course the spices will be a little fresher and it'll melt right into the glaze and make it delicious that's how you get that lacquered tongue it adds to it mm-hmm I'm gonna put the lid down we're gonna cook it for about 15 minutes more before we add a second chu'lak [Music] let's take a look at this chicken Oh oh hello you can see it's really starting to get that nice mahogany looking top and as promised I'm gonna put that last layer of glaze on oh you are in for a treat oh so good now I'm gonna put the lid back down and we're gonna cook this for another 25 to 30 minutes until the chicken registers 175 degrees okay hello hello cupcakes awesome look into this chicken is officially done I'm gonna get these off the grill now when you're taking these off the grill you want to handle them pretty gently because that skin is actually pretty delicate I like to grab the chicken by the sides and put it on the platter oh good smells so good yeah you can smell some of that smoke flavor coming on them all right so these need to rest for about 10 minutes or so before we can dig in of course we're gonna cover it with foil to craft that heat finally finally tiny hmm I'm not gonna say anything I'm just gonna put two big pieces on your plate look at that load it up no it's the smell of the spices and the smoke definitely the smoke but else get some of that garlic in there too plus I mean it is the most gorgeous looking barbecue chicken ever yes I would agree with your Ian Bar None mm-hmm the meat is incredibly juicy look at that and all those flavors really penetrated the meat from the spice rub also that braising like what that was key mm-hmm I love that the skin is rendered and all that braising liquid and then gets browned and glazed you've opened my barbecue eyes and if you'd like to try your hand at our barbecued chicken thighs well I'll start with a spice rub and sprinkle it all over chicken thighs and let them sit for one hour - a lot of spices to penetrate the meat out at the grill heat wood chips until they begin to smoke then braise the chicken thighs in a pan not a cupcake pan right on the grill in a mixture of chicken broth barbecue sauce Worcestershire and quite a bit of hot sauce then move the chicken thighs directly onto the grill grates brush with the glaze made with more barbecue sauce hot sauce and a little apple jelly and then sprinkle the meat with more spice rub so there you have it from Cook's Country our own Blue Ribbon worthy barbecue chicken thighs mic drop question for you guys who here pops their own corn ok a couple who buys already bagged popcorn I tend to buy bagged popcorn too in fact a lot of people don't pop their own corn anymore so we're here with Jack to find out exactly which brand a bag popcorn is the tops I've got some samples for you you I'm gonna tell you lots of fascinating science ok so get ready to rock your world about popcorn you can start eating most Americans are now buying bagged popcorn sales are up 60% in the last four years one of the good things here is these are relatively plain in the sense there are only three ingredients salt oil and popcorn kernels I think a lot of people like the simplicity of the bag popcorn it's not cheap there's about ten times more expensive than popping it yourself I know but it is always convenient so two things I want you to pay attention to okay first is how much salt flavor and how much corn we found too little salt and it seems bland too much salt and you can't taste the popcorn you don't get the toasty buttery notes from the popcorn even without butter popcorn has a buttery flavor second thing and this is fascinating we actually worked with a scientist at the University of nebraska-lincoln who explained to us depending on how much water's there how its heated the variety you can get one of three different shapes of popcorn unilateral it popped in one direction looks like an octopus this is a bilateral it kind of popped in both directions multilateral went in three different directions we went through each of these bags took out a hundred pieces randomly and then sorted them unilateral bilateral multilateral cuz you guys do that at home right because we wanted to know why some of them were so much crunchy er than others and it turns out the unilateral ones are the crunchy ones and so the more unilateral pieces the ones that look like little octopus the crunch here it is and a lot of multilateral it tastes like styrofoam it's kind of soft and stale the winning brands had more than 50% unilateral pieces the losing brand had 4% unilateral Isis I know you're like looking through it for unilateral pieces so anything that you're immediately noticing here among these different samples this particular one not salty enough for me it also has some strange flavor to it okay this one is the texture was okay a little bit bland these two I think are my two favorites so there are two that you liked until you didn't of this one I think is my favorite okay all right huh you want to start with the bottom yeah why don't we sit there I tried to fool you and I failed this is not popcorn you know it's cheaper but it's not necessarily better we made this a couple hours ago we want it to cool down but it isn't necessarily a poor choice to go buy bagged popcorn it's a more expensive choice and a more convenient choice but it's not necessarily a lower quality I'm gonna go with this one this one also I wasn't too crazy about yes so that's the skinny pop it was the very bottom of the rankings because this is the one that only had 4% of the unilateral pieces the ones that are really crunchy and it just tastes a little stale it's not actually scale but it seems softer not crisp alright this was my runner up and this was our winner the Cape Cod we thought this one had a nice amount of crunch this has 50% unilateral pieces really a nice popcorn and that's why and this was really close this was our runner-up it's the smart food the audience actually picked this as their favorite the experts put this in second place but again really crunchy nice level of salt a great choice well I think the experts as you said need to go way we're the experts now right audience yeah so we chose the smart food but our winner was actually Cape Cod sea salt popcorn and it's very delicious [Applause] [Music] Clanton Alabama is known for their peaches they have a huge peach shaped water tower which is the second largest peach shaped water tower in the US the first being in Gaffney South Carolina and they have a Miss peach contest including Miss peach Junior Miss peach young miss peach and Little Miss peach and they have the best tasting fried peach pies so naturally we send Brian there to take a trip and learn more that's right so peach Park Ann Clanton Alabama right off of i-65 they sell everything peach related peach salsa peach cider that's hot sauce and of course these wonderful fried peach pies so I have 20 ounces of frozen peaches wait a second frozen peaches and we were talking we're talking about one of the peach Centers of the US and we're starting with frozen peaches watch me through this so the way these pies came about was because they started using peaches that were overripe you couldn't really sell them as whole peaches in the farm stand a bruised ugly but still tasty so they made their way into pies frozen peaches I was just so convenient and they're pretty consistent all year round so it's a little bit easier and there's zero prep in zero prep all right 20 ounces of frozen peaches if you had fresh peaches even the bruised ugly ones you can use them here absolutely you'd use for peaches all right 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/8 teaspoon of salt and we're going to set this on medium heat give it a quick stir to combine everything will cover this and let the peaches cook until they release a fair amount of their liquid and they get nice and tender and that takes about 16 minutes [Music] you can see that the peaches have released a fair amount of liquid they're nice and tender at this point so what we want to do is now mash them coarsely with this potato masher and we're gonna continue to cook them until they get nice and jammy we want to look for about one and two thirds cup volume okay Julie you can see the peach mixture is reduced significantly here and it's nice and jammy we're going to transfer it to a bowl stir in two teaspoons of lemon juice really amplifies the peach flavor okay well leave this at room temperature for a couple of hours and they'll pop it in the refrigerator until it's fully chilled [Music] okay Julia so while our peach filling is chilling chilling we're gonna go ahead and work on our crust so I have two cups of all-purpose flour two teaspoons of baking powder 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt and we're going to put the lid on and give that a few pulses to combine and now we have six tablespoons of melted butter this is quite different than a traditional pie dough which doesn't have leavener and uses chilled butter right and it's also a little bit less butter than you would in typical pie dough you wanted to coat each of the grains of flour with a little bit of fat thereby making a shorter more sturdy crust we'll give this about eight pulses to combine let's see it has that look kind of like wet sand mm-hmm what we want and our final ingredient is 1/2 cup of milk well let this run for about eight seconds to bring the dough together and we could turn our dough out onto the cutting board so touch a bench flour here bring it into a nice 4-inch round that looks like a nice easy to work with dough oh yeah that's a great tail now we could take our bench scraper and we can cut this into 8 equal pieces because we're making 8 pies yeah that's 9 maybe you could help me with these we're going to form each one into a little round ball I can do that bring you back to your play-doh days and then we can just give them a little press and then we can just transfer them to our baking sheet over there there we go we'll cover that with plastic wrap well pop those in the refrigerator for 20 minutes to just set up a little alright Joe yeah you ready to rule out some pilot mice you have my own rolling pin over here it's gonna be dueling pies that's good because I'm not competitive at all yeah me neither so is this kind of like a casual thing we're doing it's not a big deal a little bench flour grab your rolling pin and we're gonna go for a six to seven inch circle all right it's not a contest we can do fastest just who's better I'm just gonna win all right I think I'm probably at 6 or 7 inches chick six and a half all right Wow you're just looking a little raggedy so just a second give me some more time oh I'll take a step back and give you some room all right now that's perfect okay three tablespoons of filling we'll go right in the center that filling really did set up yeah it's jammy okay you want to do the same sure so three tablespoons then we're just gonna brush the edge of the dough a little bit of water so to help its seal water so we fold it in half and just press it to seal all right and now we could trim off our ragged edges with this pizza cutter oh that looks nice okay there we go yeah yeah I think yours might look good it's had worse than mine but that's okay you have a fork there just go around and press it to seal Oh make it a little cry edges exactly that's great ah ours look actually pretty uniform I think we can get a job in Alabama mm-hmm okay Julia we'll go ahead and roll out the rest of the dough and film and then we could pop them in the refrigerator while we heat our oil sounds good we're ready to fry our pies I have two quarts of oil at 375 degrees that's hot it's very hot we're gonna drop four pies in and we'll let these cook for about one and a half minutes on each side until they're nicely browned and hot all the way through deep-frying a pie might sound a little unusual today but in fact it was the original way people cooked pies long before there were ovens and you can find out more about the history of fried pies on our website we're ready to flip and you can see they're nicely browned on one side I'll just give them a little push and a flip over on their own and we'll cook them till the nessie Brown on that second side looking good okay Julia we're going to remove them from the oil now I'm happy to see that none of that filling leaked out into the hot oil huh we are good it's too good maybe boom it smells like fried dough it smells delicious okay Julia we'll drop the second batch of pies into the oil when they're done we can let it sit for 10 minutes to cool off and then we're ready to eat sounds good [Music] the pies of cool for 10 minutes we're ready to eat now it's really important to cool for 10 minutes at least because what we're dealing with this liquid that looks good I think this should be entered in the Miss peach contest hmm the dough is nice and tender and light mm-hmm you know the frozen peaches make a great filling it has a really strong fresh peach flavor can't even tell they were frozen mmm hmm and the dough holds up to being held like a hand pie I think there should be a mr. peach contest what I win you would totally win rounds right so for awesome fried peach pies use frozen peaches they're always perfectly ripe and they require zero prep cook the peaches with some sugar on the stovetop until soft and mash them into a coarse puree and chill it down in the fridge for a rich tasting tote use the food processor to combine all-purpose flour melted butter and whole milk along with some baking powder once assembled fry the pies and a pot of 375 degree oil until golden and there you have it from Cook's Country awesome fried peach pies you can get this recipe all the recipes from the season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website cookscountry.com nice job thanks for watching cooks country from America's Test Kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say I now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later alligator [Laughter]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 216,815

Rating: 4.9245501 out of 5

Keywords: bbq, barbecue, chicken, chicken thighs, bbq sauce, barbecue sauce, bbq chicken, barbecue chicken, grilling, grill, grilled chicken, peaches, peach, peach pie, fried peach pie, pie dough, dough, popcorn, taste test

Id: EHozW5Nh6II

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 16 2018