Grandma’s Barbecue Chicken Recipe: Budget Party Recipe with 3 Ingredients!

Recipe right at the top!

Grandma’s Barbecue Chicken Recipe with 3 Ingredients—Scroll down for recipe notes and tips.

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Keep reading for recipe notes and tips:

My grandma makes a mean barbecue chicken. I tried to duplicate her recipe at least four times just winging it and each time, it turned out so-so…nothing like Grandma’s, which is falling-off-the-bone tender, nicely blackened, and sweetly sticky. For my most recent attempt, I smartened up and called Grandma to find out exactly what she does to make her barbecue chicken taste amazing every time. Don’t come crying to me if you skip a step or substitute an ingredient and it doesn’t turn out awesome. The devil’s in the details.

How to make Grandma’s Barbecue Chicken Recipe—no substitutions allowed!

• Use bone in, skin on chicken. [See: “don’t come crying to me”, above.]
• You can use a whole, cut up chicken for this recipe, including the breasts. A whole chicken weighs around 4-5 lbs. Put the breasts in the middle of the casserole dish so they’re a little protected from the heat, because breast meat dries out quickly. I prefer to make Grandma’s barbecue chicken recipe using only legs and thighs, but the breasts turn out fine—as long as you use bone in, skin on chicken breast. Boneless, skinless chicken breast will dry up like jerky in this recipe.
• Yes, you have to put the onions on top, even if everybody hates onions.
• Don’t be chintzy: use the whole bottle of barbecue sauce.
• Make sure to grease your casserole dish with non stick spray, butter, or Crisco, or you’ll be scrubbing all night.
• No, you can’t make it in the crockpot or Instant Pot. No.
• You need 2 hours start to finish to make this recipe right. The chicken will be cooked through to 160° in about one hour, but hour #2 is where the magic happens: blackened, bubbly, sticky tenderness.
• Use any barbecue sauce you like. I use KC Masterpiece without high fructose corn syrup when I can find it, or Sweet Baby Ray’s because it often goes on sale for $0.99.

The ubiquitous 9×13 Pyrex baking dish is a little too small to fit 4 lbs of chicken, so I use this 10×15 baking dish. The photos show a disposable baking pan, because I made this dish to take to a friend with a new baby.

• Check Amazon price for shallow disposable aluminum pans.

Budget Party Recipe: You can make Grandma’s Barbecue Chicken recipe for $5.50 total, that feeds 6-8 people:

• $4.00 for 4 lbs of chicken legs and/or thighs, sale price at any grocery store.
• $1.00 for a bottle of barbecue sauce, sale price at any grocery store.
• $0.50 for a medium onion at $1 per pound.

Earn a $300 statement credit when you spend $3,000 in 6 months on a new American Express Blue Cash Preferred credit card: Apply for an American Express Card for the $300 bonus with my link here. Amex Blue Cash Preferred gives you 6% cashback at the grocery store, and 3% cashback on gas.

How much chicken meat is on a whole chicken? Get all the nerdy details here.