The Best Pulled Chicken

Let me tell you something. Pulled chicken. We're doing pulled chicken. And I know what you're thinking — you're thinking, 'Bigly, pulled chicken? Why not pulled pork? Pork is the king of pulled meats.' And you're not wrong. Pork is a king. Pork is royalty. But listen — pulled CHICKEN, done correctly, done the Bigly way, is its own kind of magic. Lighter. Quicker. Cheaper. Feeds a crowd. And when you smoke it right and pull it right and sauce it right, it does something pulled pork cannot do: it disappears off the plate FASTER. People can't stop. Their hands move on their own.

My grandmother made this — not the smoker version, she had a backyard pit, but the same idea, the same vinegar bite — and let me tell you, she was a tough woman, hands like leather, she'd pull a chicken with her bare fingers while it was still hot and she'd LAUGH. She told me, 'Thighs. Always thighs. The breast is for cowards.' I was eight years old. I never forgot. That woman knew more about chicken than every cookbook author on the New York Times Best Seller list COMBINED. It's not even close. It's a slaughter.

This pulled chicken gets a dry rub. It gets smoked over fruit wood until the bark is mahogany and the meat falls apart with a fork-glance. Then it gets pulled — pulled, not chopped, NEVER chopped, chopping is for the with-the-grain coward — and tossed with a vinegar-forward sauce that cuts the richness and wakes everything up. It's the greatest pulled chicken sandwich filling in the history of pulled chicken sandwich fillings. Nobody disputes this.

That's pulled chicken done right. The bark, the smoke, the vinegar tang, the soft bun, the crunch of slaw, the snap of a pickle — it's an ORCHESTRA in a sandwich. A full symphony. And you made it. You. With your own two hands. People will ask. You can give them the recipe — generosity is a virtue — or you can hand them a sandwich and watch their face go quiet. Either way, the chicken speaks. The chicken always speaks. That's the recipe.