PORTER’S CHICKEN BOG

INGREDIENTS:

4 Chicken thigh/leg quarters or 3 lb. whole chicken
5 Cups chicken broth
1 Onion finely chopped (1 cup or more)
1 Small bell pepper finely chopped (about 1 cup or less)
1/2 Stick butter (do not substitute margarine)
1 Tablespoon fresh chopped sage (dried rubbed sage if fresh not available)
2 Teaspoons Salt (to taste)
1/2 Teaspoon Black Pepper (to taste)
1/4 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper (to taste)
1 11 (oz.) can Cream of Chicken Soup
2 Cups long grain white rice (Mahatmas or similar brand) Do not use quick cooking rice!
1 Lb. Smoked Sausage; 1/2 inch slices Most recipes leave it out, however the Porter Family Loves the smoked sausage!
 

Place chicken quarters in small pressure cooker or stock pot and cover with enough hot water to have at least 5 cups of broth after cooking chicken.   If using pressure cooker, chicken will be tender in 20 minutes timed after pressure indicator starts letting off excess build up of steam and with a regular stock pot it will take at least an hour.   Remove chicken pieces from pot; allow chicken to cool and pull meat from bones shredding chicken by hand.   Discard bones and heavy fat and skin.   If chicken is very fat pour broth from pot into a bowl and strain off some of the fat.  Sauté onion and bell pepper in butter until tender.

Add 5 cups of chicken broth back to pot along with can of cream of chicken soup, salt, black pepper, sage, cayenne pepper, chopped onion, bell pepper and 2 cups rice.   Bring to a boil and add chicken pieces, sliced sausage and reduce heat to low placing lid on pot and simmer (covered) for 20 minutes or more until all broth is absorbed and rice is cooked.   Leave lid on pot while cooking:   Remember:  “If you are looking, you are not cooking”.

Chicken bog is a South Carolina traditional recipe that goes back at least a century or more.   I added the cream of chicken soup, freshly chopped sage, smoked sausage and cayenne pepper to give it an ATTITUDE.  There are many variations to this recipe but I like the combination and simplicity of my version not to mention the main thing TASTE!   Some say the recipe gets it name because the chicken is bogged down in the rice.  Left over Bog freezes very well.  Recipe by Bill Porter 2007.

YIELD:  4 to 6 big servings.  Pix of Porter's Chicken Bog added on 08-26-08.

Below a few pixs of the "assembly" of the chicken bog...not a complete pictorial essay...you do use a few extra pans for this dish but it is more than worth the extra clean up time.

Deboning the boiled chicken quarters after a good cool down period.

The results from four (4) deboned chicken quarters.  Placed chicken stock from the small pressure cooker into another pot and will reuse the pressure cooker for sautéing the onion and bell peppers in butter (not margarine). 

Cutting board in use....I normally use only green or red bell peppers but had to use this yellow one up before it went bad!

Pix of onions and red bell pepper being sautéed in butter for another batch of Chicken Bog on 10-11-08.

Ok, by now you know I like to play with a digital camera too.....grin if you must!

Smoked beef sausage.  I have done my own...see the short stories page Sausage Making but in this case it is just as easy to purchase a pound link or I should say they have cut the package down now to 14 ozs. and kept the same 16 oz. price!

This little Presto brand pressure cooker model 0126407 six (6) quart size really gets used and the right size for this recipe.  I purchased this pressure cooker just to do chicken and rice and now use it mostly for Porter's Chicken Bog.  Note: After a serving of my Chicken Bog,  regular chicken and rice is like eating grits cooked without any salt, in other words plain or bland tasting not to say that regular chicken and rice is not great, but this chicken bog takes chicken and rice up to the plateau or summit for taste.  Ok, enough of that but "It is a poor frog that want croak on it's own pond", and  Dizzy Dean use to say during those World Series games between the Yankees and Dodgers, "If you can do it, it ain't bragging" along with singing a few lines of The Wabash Cannonball.  Go ahead and grin now.  The pressure cooker saves some boiling time on the chicken but not necessary if you are not concerned about the time.  After the above was sautéed a few minutes, the rest of the ingredients were added and allowed to do it's thing for about 25 to 30 minutes while some hush puppies were deep fried.

There is usually enough chicken stock left over after using 5 cups for this recipe to prepare a few batches of rice of which rice does taste better with the chicken stock and more or less "free" in this case and it freezes and refrigerates very well too.