Barbecued chicken in the style of Brooks'

There's an updated version of this recipe at Barbecued chicken the style of Brooks #2 , and I like that recipe better.

There's this central New York fixture: Brooks' BBQ chicken . Now that I live here again I could much more easily go to the restaurant seeing as it's 20 minutes away, or any number of the  community organizations that sell it as a fund-raiser. Nonetheless, I received this Brooks' gift pack including spiedie marinate and barbecue sauce, so I had to do something with it.

One advantage of making your own is you know where your chicken comes from, in this case it's antibiotic free and free-range (though not actually organic). I broke down the whole chicken myself to make breasts, wings and the leg/thigh. The latter I marinated, vacuum sealed, with the spiedie marinade for 2 days in the refrigerator.

The spiedie is another of those central New York things - it's essentially meat marinated in basically Italian dressing, then grilled, but that's another post.

One of the things about cooking chicken parts on the grill is that it's hard to get the right balance of cooking it through and burning the outside to a crisp. I thought I'd give cooking it in the sous vide in the marinade a try. I cooked for 2 hours at 160°F. Then I rapidly chilled and refrigerated the chicken to help it reabsorb its juices.

I then finished the chicken but throwing the chicken on the grill to brown it.

Since I wasn't going to eat it right away I actually re-chilled, vacuum sealed, and froze it.

I put the frozen, vacuum sealed package directly into the sous vide for 45 minutes at 160°F to reheat.

It was really very good. Very juicy and tender. Though it indeed would be far less work to buy the chicken directly from Brooks'…