Penalty Box Windsor Chicken Delight Sauce Recipe
Blair Capellas
According to the website, about 4000 of these wraps are sold weekly, meaning over 5 million have been eaten since 1992. It's a simple wrap made with grilled chicken, onions, tomatoes, shredded lettuce and the secret Delight sauce on a grilled pita, and it's clearly a crowd-pleaser.
I am a long-time vegetarian but am trying to branch out into chicken because I want my three little ones to have a few protein options besides their current diet of scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs, and scrambled eggs. So my husband pointed me to the butter-slathered Julia Child version that his mother used to make (talk about pressure!). It came out delicious but inexplicably (to me) you are supposed to keep the chicken balanced on its side throughout the roasting time, which required me to continually rebalance it AND to hover nervously over the oven for more than an hour. I think your less-stressful-looking recipe may inspire me to give chicken another chance. :)
Thank you for the recipe for this succulent chicken. Might I implore you to dream up a recipe for a buffalo version? I am feeling the winter blues, and a taste of summer like that would be a great reminder of what we all have to look forward to in a few months :)
I have frozen chicken legs in the freezer that I was planning to use for Canal house preserved lemon recipe, but now I want to make this! Can I put the frozen chicken legs in the marinade and let it marinate and defrost at the same time, or do I have to defrost the chicken first. thanks for your blog and recipe. I look at the blog often and look forward to your cookbook.
It looks really delicious! I was just looking for an original chicken recipe (hard,really hard to find) and I never thought of using buttermilk in anything else than sweets, but I will definitely try this, thanks!
Made this yesterday with chicken thighs (which I love). I soaked 6 thighs in the brine and pulled out two for supper last night, did 2 more for lunch today and think it will be okay for tomorrow. I really enjoy how flavorful and moist the meat stays. I marinated in a glass covered container instead of the plastic bag and flipped it over a couple of times to make sure every nook and cranny got sauced.
I made these last night with drumsticks and boneless thighs and they were delicious! Today they were just as good cold from the fridge for a quick lunch. This is my new go-to roasted chicken recipe. Thanks, Deb!
AWE inspiring! I added one jalapeno, cut into large chunks (seeds included), and used some lovely smoked paprika, and subbed brown sugar for the white in your recipe. It marinated for 24 hours; the buttermilk happened to be very thick and luscious, and clung to the chicken perfectly during baking, which is fortunate because I completely forgot the olive oil drizzle. The result was a incredible, smokey, spicy baked chicken that will certainly be repeated here. OMG good. Thank you for the fab recipe!
I did a half recipe of this last night using 1 cup of buttermilk and 1/2 of a chicken cut into 3 parts. Mixed up the marinade before going to work (at 4am, ouch!) and cooked it for dinner around 6pm. It was SUPER fantastic and so blessedly easy! Thank you Smitten Kitchen!!
Your photography is as beautiful as the recipes! I do have a weakness for fried chicken, but as I am no longer a young guy, time has come to pay attention to healthy alternatives like this one. Question, I personally like it really, really gold/brown, is there a way to get that crust without over-cooking the chicken? Thanks, I will try this tomorrow night.
We made this today after a 36hr marinade (we were delayed) and the results were fantastic! Our chicken released quite a bit of liquid which I poured off mid-way and made a lovely gravy. Even my super-insanely-picky-only-eats-buttered-pasta- daughter pronounced it scrumptious. This recipe is absolutely a keeper.
Made this last night, and WOW was delish, used chicken breasts with bone-in took about 45 minutes, but was so moist and great tasting. Love the idea of doing boneless too, might try this next.
Thanks for a great new chik recipe for my file!
love love love this chicken. so easy to make and it smells fantastic! this has been my go-to recipe since you posted it, deb! i sprinkled some fresh rosemary and have marinated up to 48 hours. so good.
This recipe sounded really good and the chicken is moist, but beware when roasting the legs in the oven. I had about 8 legs in the pan=2.8 lbs and they were kinda squished in there. I cooked them for 35 min, a little longer than the recipe directed. When i took them out they looked good just like the pic, but the inside was not done all the way.Definitely my fault for not using a thermometer but it killed my apatite anyway.I did throw them back in the oven for another 15 min and they turned out very well. Just thought I would share my results for those looking to give em a try :-)
Hi, We used the marinade on whole chicken parts (legs, breasts) at it turned our great. We did use a broiler to crisp up the skin, and used different times for the legs and breasts. This was easy and tasted great. This has become our go-to chicken recipe. Thanks again!
Has anyone saved the brine to reuse again? It always makes me sad to just toss it. I raved about this recipe to a friend and he raised this question: can you store it in a container in your freezer to brine more chicken a few weeks later?
this recipe was extremely underwhelming. i advise anyone still reading these comments to save their buttermilk for other recipes and generally avoid all chicken recipes on this site. there is a lot of hyperbole thrown around about mediocrity.
Deb, I adore this recipe. I cooked the chicken breasts, drums and legs (after marinating for 8 hours) on the grill, at 350 for 55 minutes. Half way through the grill process, I brushed the chicken with barbecue sauce. This chicken was amazing!!! Anything else you would suggest for grilling? 275 for two hours?
Dear Deb: If time permits, I always soak chicken in brine overnight. It is so moist when baked due to the brine. My skinless oven fried chicken legs are so yummy (cornflakes and Panko) I cannot wait to try your recipe, thanks Deb, SB
My instant enthusiasm led me to the purchase of Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, a tome of all things North Carolina barbecue. Captured within those pages was an original recipe for North Carolina vinegar sauce, which I made during my next pulled pork cook, and with just a little cut down on the salt, it tasted pretty good to me.
Little did I know that the evolution of the sauce had come such a long way from that dated recipe, and Serious Eaters let me know it in no uncertain terms. With the breadth of comments that post elicited, I've been able to piece together and refine a sauce that I finally feel confident enough is in proper shape to present to the finest smoked swine and the interweb masses at large.
Finally comes the pulled pork, the most perfect pairing for this sauce. I fell in love with the magic it imparted onto some smoky pork in North Carolina and I feel it's replicated incredibly well at home now. Although the sauce is quite strong on spice and tang on its own, when added to the meat, it feels like the natural pork flavor is only enhanced rather than getting a mouth full of hot vinegar. That's the beauty of this sauce and why, after posting a seemingly "wrong" recipe, I took a couple years to refine it to what I now consider its proper state. Not being a North Carolinian though, I still have to ask, "How am I doing?"
Texas Craig I hate to admit it, but this Dallas-born and raised boy had to modify the original recipe - it was TOO Hot!
I used a different hot sauce, so that might have been the reason, but I doubled (at least) the brown sugar, and tripled the ketchup - was still a little bit too vinegar/spicey, but I thought I'd chalk it up to the experience...
we in the western-most Southern state prefer our bbq sauce sweeter and with more tomato...remember, it's just a preference, not a requirement...
thanks for the recipe to try!Posted Sun, Jan 8 2012 9:07PM
Jonathan Rice You forgot the most important thing.. 1 half a stick of butter.. I have been eating carolina sauces all my life and cooking it at firestations all over NC. That's the secret of good sauce for chicken or pork. Try it and tell me what you think...Posted Fri, Jan 27 2012 1:51PM
Bob I doubled the recipe with slight changes, including ditching the ketchup, and substituting cayenne pepper for texas pete and kicking up the heat a notch and it was a hit at our annual bonfire party last night:
4 cups apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
4 teaspoons cayenne pepper
4 teaspoons red pepper flakes
2 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 teaspoons kosher salt
I added this to a 4 quart crockpot full of diced roast pork. (Just used the crockpot on low to keep it warm while serving)
We thought we we never go through that much since we had pulled pork with other sauces, but we ran out early while the other options did not "sell" as well. If you don't want it with as much kick, reduct the red pepper and cayenne by a teaspoon each, and increase the brown sugar by a tablespoon back to the original proportions.Posted Sun, Oct 21 2012 7:44AM
Doug Just wanted to say thank you for posting this. I wanted to make my first homemade sauce for some pork that we cooked Imu style (we are living in Hawaii for the year). I usually like Texas style with a kick but this was my first homemade trial. We are going to a friends house for Thanksgiving and we are bringing the pork. I followed the recipe that you gave and it is super yummy. I used to live in Chapel Hill and Greensboro so am no stranger to NC style Q and your recipe hit the spot. ThanksPosted Thu, Nov 22 2012 7:40PM
Eddie The above comments about no ketchup in Eastern NC dip are correct, but you have so little in there I can't imagine it will supply much more than color. Leave it out, and you would have an "authentic" Eastern dip. Not that I stand too much on authenticity. For example, I don't do whole hog in my backyard. Allen & Son uses butts, but I don't know about anyone East of Chapel Hill doing that. For backyard, I do butts with eastern dip.
I found my favorite vinegar recipe at Weber's site:
1-1/2 cups cider vinegar
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp Tabasco sauce
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Kosher salt (to taste)
Ground black pepper (to taste)
(Bring to boil, simmer 10 minutes)
Of course I prefer Texas Pete to Tabasco. It's not quite as hot as Tabasco, so I raise it up closer to 1 tablespoon Texas Pete. I'm not religious about measuring the flakes, either, but I probably double them. I also tend to use turbinado or demerara sugar rather than white.Posted Sun, Feb 3 2013 9:30PM