I like the Bourbon Chicken you buy at the food courts, but I like this recipe more.  The first words out of my husband’s mouth when I put his plate in front of him were “Delicious!  Put this one on your blog!”.  I said I’d have to make it again to tweak a few things and he said “sure, you can make it again tomorrow if you want”.  So… thumbs up.

This is a Bourbon Chicken copycat recipe with almost 3000 comments.  I didn’t look at all 3000, but I looked at enough and used my own instincts to tweak the recipe a bit. It’s sweet, but not too sweet.  It has some heat which you can adjust to your liking.  It has great flavour.  And it makes lots of sauce.  Here are the changes I made:

• I grilled the chicken and cut it up instead of sauteing chicken pieces (the recipe shows both methods).  I always opt for grilling if possible to avoid the fry smell in my house.  Of course not everyone has a grill handy though.
• I added the cooked chicken to the sauce only at the end instead of boiling it in the sauce (which I think would make it rubbery).
• I cut down the sugar a bit since many people claimed the original recipe was too sweet.
• I didn’t have apple juice so I used apple sauce and it worked perfectly.  Orange juice would be fine too.
• I thickened the sauce with some cornstarch.
• I increased the amount of sauce in proportion to the chicken (I like a lot of sauce, enough to soak into the rice).
• Finally, I added a bit of Bourbon.  Believe it or not, there is no Bourbon in Bourbon chicken.  The name comes from where it was created – at a restaurant on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Although the list of sauce ingredients looks long, the whole dish can be made in less than 30 minutes.  You can even make the sauce and chicken ahead of time, then cook the sauce and add the chicken in 10 minutes before serving.  Yum!  I think this would make a great appetizer too, served with toothpicks.  Enjoy.