Barbecue Chicken and Burning Furniture

What do you do with an old chair that’s been in the garage so long it's covered in mold and hosting an entire colony of ants?

What’s to be done with the spare set of kitchen cabinets that have been sitting on the back porch, hosting a thriving rat community?

Set them on fire, obviously.

It’s not just furniture, either. You can burn moldy bedding from the garage, cursed dolls you found in a random crate, documents you don’t have the patience to manually shred, even perfectly mundane things like yard waste.

Or perhaps a childhood stuffy that’s had its heart eaten by rodents.

But cathartic bonfires are for after dark. Before you can pile up every material object that’s given you strife that day and set it ablaze, you need dinner.

Nothing beats barbecue on a warm summer evening. Not only is the barbecue a quintessential summer cooking tool, it offers a wide variety of options for you to enjoy. Whether it’s the classic hamburgers and hot dogs, steak, kebab, or grilled vegetables, everything tastes better when cooked over an open flame.

My personal favorite brand of barbecue after a long, hot day and the existential dread of opening yet another cardboard box full of mud-dauber nests, is barbecue chicken.

The key to a truly excellent barbecue chicken is starting it in the oven, which you can conveniently do while you try to find the back of the closet in your mother's sewing room. Rub the chicken down with you favorite seasons, and bake until it’s cooked all the way through and swimming in its own liquified fats. Then plop that sucker on the grill. The oven keeps it juicy on the inside, and a short stint on a hot grill gets it charred and crispy on the outside. Flames leap, grease sizzles, and you get a perfect chicken, every time.

What’s to go with this most excellent of all barbecue chicken, you ask? Basically whatever you’ve got lying around. It’s been a long day. You’re tired, and feel icky from digging through the detritus of a lifetime hoarder’s two-car garage (with added shop space!)

Some days it’ll be nice, healthy veggies, other days it’s mac and cheese. Maybe you dig into the take-out leftovers from the other night when you were too exhausted even to toss a match onto some charcoal briquettes.

The beauty of this absolute perfection is that you can pair it with just about anything. You want a salad? It goes with salad! Do french fries sound better (or perhaps some other form of boiled, mashed, or stewed potato)? All of those go great with barbecued chicken! Mac and cheese? Pasta? Garlic bread? Watermelon? All excellent additions to a plate of crispy, juicy, barbecue chicken.

Leftover pizza and quesadillas? Sure, why the hell not. Goes great with barbecue chicken. It’s all delicious.

Barbecue chicken is great for most any summer occasion! Maybe you just need an easy meal at the end of a long summer's day, or a long weekend! You could be planning a family cookout at your favorite waterside park, or a 4th of July party with your neighbors. Maybe you’ve been cleaning out (and cleaning up) the same property for three summers in a row because it really was that bad.

No matter what kind of long summer day you've endured (or enjoyed, good for you), barbecue chicken makes it better. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the crisp, juicy deliciousness of your freshly grilled barbecue chicken (with your choice of sides).

You made it through another day, and the chicken tastes great.

Then, when the sun goes down, the stars come out, and the air starts to cool, pile those infested cabinets, moldy chairs, boxes of wasps nests, and disemboweled stuffies in the backyard, and set it all on fire.