Drunken Chicken and Simpler Times

Base:
Lager Beer, 1 bottle
Chicken Stock, 3 C.
Olive Oil, ½ C.
Stewed Tomatoes, 1 (12 oz.) can
Garlic (crushed, minced, or chopped), 2 tsp.
(Frozen) Chicken Thighs, 2–3 lbs.

Spice Mix:
Cayenne, 1 tsp.
Black Pepper, ½ tsp.
Crushed Red Pepper, ½ tsp.
Chili Powder, 2 tsp.
Paprika, 2 tsp.
Thyme, 2 tsp.
Basil, 2 tsp.
Sage, 2 tsp.
Rosemary, 2.5 tsp.
Bay Leaves, 3
Bread Crumbs, 1.5 C.

To Serve:
White Rice, 3 C.
Table Salt, to taste*
Louisiana Hot Sauce, enough

*I generally do this as a group meal, and have never added my own salt, based on the varying levels of saltiness my people have enjoyed. By all means, if you want to salt earlier, go for it!

1.) Turn a medium sized slow cooker on low. Throw in chicken to make bottom layer.

2.) Mix all the dry ingredients/spices (except bay leaves) and the bread crumbs together in a separate, medium bowl.

3.) Pour in beer, stock, olive oil, garlic, and stewed tomatoes in with dry ingredients, pour over chicken. If you’re using frozen thighs, it’s okay if the chicken is sticking out of the top, it’ll melt into the mixture soon enough.

4.) Cook on low for 6 hours. Stir occasionally to ensure the tomatoes and bread crumb mixture don’t stick to the side and bottom of the pot (it generally doesn’t, but you do you).

5.) Shred chicken in-mixture for the last half hour of cooking; use 2 forks.

6.) Cook white rice in preferred method for serving.

7.) When done, remove the bay leaves (or eat to assert dominance). Serve the chicken and sauce over white rice, season with salt* to preferred taste and douse in preferred amount of Louisiana Hot Sauce.

8.) For leftovers, spoon into 18 oz. containers and refrigerate up to a week. Freeze, as far as I’ve found, forever. To reheat from frozen, plop frozen block of drunken chicken into a pot and reheat over medium-low heat, stirring and flipping occasionally, until melted and hot. To reheat from thawed, pour mixture into a pot and reheat over low heat until hot.

College was a simpler time, in hindsight. In my junior year, if my partner and I weren’t feeling dining hall food or were too lazy to make our own, there was always Yat’s in the neighboring building. To us, it was a completely new dining experience: Cajun and Creole-inspired dishes over rice, the likes of which neither of us had enjoyed before. As I learned years later from actual Louisiana natives, it probably doesn’t compare to the real thing. But to a couple of Chicagoland natives who only went south of the Mason-Dixon line to get to Florida for vacations, it was top-tier legit. It resonated with my classmates, too; we saw plenty of them at all meals of the day.

The serving was simple: bed of white rice, a healthy slathering of your selected stew (Drunken Chicken, styles of Étouffée, Jambalaya, Gumbo), served with a couple slices of garlic-butter soaked bread. To top it off, one could peruse the wall of hot sauces to top it all off. Whether you ate in-house or to-go, the portions were always plenty filling physically, but always left you wanting more emotionally. My first order was Drunken Chicken, and I never looked back after that.

Drunken Chicken from Yat’s would serve as a bedrock for long days working on assignments or research, or to take a break from heated discussions and arguments, or because we didn’t feel like using the apartment’s kitchen to cook dinner. It helped to make my college feel that much homier. But more importantly (and entertainingly), it eventually grew into an obsession that I had to find a way to replicate.

After graduating from college, my partner and I moved down to central-ish Indiana, no longer adjacent to a Yat’s. So, between my shifts working at Buffalo Wild Wings, I tried to look up copycat recipes, but none of them quite hit the way I wanted them to. They were all missing something. But every time we went on date days towards Indianapolis, we’d almost always find our way to a Yat’s location, and I’d be reminded of just how good they made their Drunken Chicken. And, more obsessively, it reminded me HOW MUCH WORK MINE STILL HAD TO GO.

The refining continued when we moved up to Michigan the next year. More broth. Different amounts of oil. Chicken breasts transitioned to thighs. Rosemary got added, because how the HELL did I miss rosemary to begin with, it’s on the YAT’S MENU, MIKE. But never salt. It was always a matter of consistency, of texture, not sodium. Also, my partner didn’t like adding salt to things if we could help it, so the habit stuck and I justified it with individual tastes over time. Don’t @ me.

I like to think by the time I was leaving Michigan (in the throes of a comparably amicable divorce), I had it down pat. Brought the recipe down to Chicago where I was going to live with a friend for a few months and made a bunch of it. My friend loved it. But she also put it over a bed of lettuce and requested I remove, like, 90% of the spice mixture (how often and why varies on who you ask), so watching her eat it wasn’t without its emotional cost.

Now, way off in Connecticut, nobody’s heard of Yat’s, fewer still have heard of Drunken Chicken. The friends I’ve served it to liked it (and put their own various amounts of salt in it), and I love it for a quick, easy fix. I have twelve containers of it in my freezer in case I don’t feel like cooking for two weeks. But more than that, it’s tied to fond memories, easier times, and the first time I can say I was truly interested in cooking…even if it was just to have a back-up plan for when Yat’s was no longer around the corner.

I hope it serves you well, too. It’s easy to throw together and versatile for a number of folks’ tastes, and that’s all we can ask for these days.