Recipe: Picnic Chicken

Picnic Chicken (two-to-three day recipe, but it's worth it)
Newsgroup posting by Rinn (catharin)

This is an old family recipe.

1/2 cup white sugar
2 tbsp ginger powder
Garlic powder to taste
Onion powder to taste
Salt and pepper to taste.

These are the basic proportions for a mix that will cover four chicken breasts. Experiment, just keep the ginger-to-sugar ratio the same.

Anyway, shake raw, preferably skin-on, bone-in chicken parts in a bag with the sugar mixture so they are coated with it. Lay them in a sealable dish and sprinkle the remaining mix over them. Seal the dish and leave in the refrigerator for 24 hours. The dish has to seal well because this is very (divinely) smelly.

When you open up the dish the next day, you will have a heart attack, because the chicken will have turned red and translucent and it will be swimming in this disgusting (but really good-smelling) ichor.

Remove the horrible stuff and shake it in a bag with flour, salt and pepper as you do for standard fried chicken. Do not use the ichor for anything else unless you cook it first, because even though it smells divine, it has disgusting raw chicken juice in it. WASH YOUR HANDS. Salmonella is not cool.

Cook the floured chicken in a small amount of some kind of oil over medium heat until it starts to brown. Watch it carefully, because the sugar will make it burn easily.

When the outside is brown, put it on a rack in a baking pan and bake it at 350 F for 15 minutes for white meat, or 30 minutes for dark meat. This just finishes cooking it gently. If you like grease (like I do) don't bother with the rack. It is very good hot, but it is even better cold the next day. This is what I take to all picnics, and I am a picnic goddess because of it. If you want wine, something like a Riesling is great with it.

Not the recipe part...
This is supposedly an old family recipe. I don't believe that, because I don't know how long ginger, garlic and onion powder have been on the market. Anyway, in a bid for authenticity I once tried making it with fresh ginger, garlic and onion and it didn't work. My mom was in Parade magazine with it in the early '60s.