A great meal to grab any evening!
by Ari Weinzweig
Here’s an exceptional evening meal for you! A whole Amish chicken, rubbed with our freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper and salt, put on the pit to smoke slowly over smoldering whole oak logs for about three or four hours. All you need to do is call ahead to order one and swing by the Roadhouse to pick it up. (You can also just come by and order one on the spot, but we’re only doing a limited number of these every day, so if it were me, I’d order ahead to make sure I got one.) The Roadhouse crew put a bit of butter on top of the bird, then wrap it really well in foil so you can get it home in good shape. Best bet, I think, is just to unwrap and eat. If you want to heat it up, either stick it in a hot (350°) oven in the foil for a bit, or you can microwave it (after you take it out of the foil!) for a few minutes if you want to go more quickly. Since we eat dinner at like 11 at night and I was in a hurry, we did the latter and it worked out just fine.
Ways to enjoy our pit-smoked chicken.
Tammie and I ate ours with a good green salad (greens from Argus Farm Stop) along with some grits, mac and cheese, and mashed potatoes from the Roadhouse as sides. We set the chicken on a plate in between us. Pulled off pieces by hand which made it easier to get a good ratio of the delicious peppery dark smoky skin and the meat and meant we could mix up white meat and dark meat as we liked. We dipped the pieces in the Red Rage barbecue sauce which turned out to be a seriously awesome combo. It’s great with the Roadhouse’s South Carolina mustard BBQ sauce, too.
How to enjoy the leftovers!
The whole pit-smoked chicken is easily dinner for two, and I’d say probably three. (If you don’t eat a lot, maybe even four.) Tammie and I LOVED it! The two of us ate about half the bird for dinner, and then put the leftover pieces of chicken into the paprika pasta (see below). Leftovers are also awesome for soup, atop greens, making into smoked chicken salad, or just nibbling on out of the fridge when you need a snack. We took the bones that were left behind and boiled them with an array of vegetables to make some broth, which we later served with some of those amazing alphabet pasta from Rustichella that we can deliver to you from the Deli.
We only smoke a limited number of these whole chickens every day and have been running out more often than not each evening. They come out in time for dinner and it can’t hurt to order ahead and have us hold one for you.