If you care what I think at all, check out my notes below :) I am unbothered if you don't.

1. Chicken Seasoning (for about 6 chicken thighs):

• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• ½ teaspoon onion powder
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon dried parsley
• ½ teaspoon dry mustard powder
• ¼ teaspoon dried ginger
• ¼ teaspoon ground clove
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat your oven!

2. Cooking the Chicken:

• Season the skinless chicken thighs with the spice blend.
• Heat enough oil in a pan over medium-high heat until it sizzles.
• Brown the chicken on both sides. (Can also be done on a grill or in a 500°F oven).
• Transfer the chicken and pan to the oven (preferably with a lid or covered with aluminum foil).
• Reduce heat slightly.
• Add 1 thinly sliced red onion and about 4-5 thinly sliced garlic cloves to the pan.
• Add a little water or chicken stock to deglaze the pan (scrape up the brown bits).
• Add ¼ cup cider vinegar and 2 tablespoons ketchup.
• Bake in a 375°F oven for 1.5 - 1 hour and 45 minutes.

3. Spicy Apple Slaw:

• 1 cup thinly sliced cabbage
• 1 thinly sliced jalapeño (seeds can be left in)
• 1 thinly sliced apple (Golden Delicious recommended)
• 1 thinly sliced shallot
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• A decent pinch of kosher salt
• Juice from 2 limes
  • Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the chicken is ready.

4. Assembly:

• Shred the cooked chicken. Cover and let rest for at least 10 minutes.
• Toast the buns.
• While the buns are still warm, rub both toasted sides with raw garlic cloves.
• Don't be shy with the spicy apple slaw.

Shopping List:

Produce:

• Red Onion: 1
• Garlic: 1 head (for slicing and rubbing buns)
• Cabbage: 1/4 head
• Jalapeño: 1 (for slaw)
• Apple: 1 (Golden Delicious recommended, for slaw)
• Shallot: 1 (for slaw)
• Limes: 2 (for slaw) (we used a bottle)

Meat/Poultry:

• Chicken Thighs: 6 skinless, boneless

Pantry:

• Smoked Paprika: 1 tsp
• Onion Powder: 1 tsp
• Garlic Powder: 1 tsp
• Kosher Salt: (You likely have this, but check!)
• Black Pepper: (You likely have this, but check!)
• Dried Oregano: 1 tsp
• Dried Parsley: 1 tsp
• Dry Mustard Powder: 1 tsp
• Dried Ginger: 1/4 tsp
• Ground Clove: 1/4 tsp
• Nutmeg: 1/4 tsp
• Cider Vinegar: 1/4 cup
• Ketchup: 2 tablespoons
• Olive Oil: 1 tablespoon
• Chicken Stock: (Optional, for deglazing pan)

Bakery/Bread:

• Buns: Enough for the number of sandwiches you want to make (likely 6 or more)

Attribution - @everydayisfeastday on Instagram, this link is to the reel. If you find this interesting, make sure to follow him!

About the dish - wonderful savory barbecue-esque pulled chicken & onions served on toasted wheat with a crunchy, bright, and slightly spicy lime and jalapeno slaw. I'd love to order this at a restaurant.

I'm sure complaining about it is, at this point, more annoying than the act itself, but I have to mention how frustrating it is when recipes are placed AFTER an author's uninteresting banal story about nothing in particular. I am doing my part - my banalities come AFTER the recipe 😄 I'll just be going over my experience with the recipe, what I did change, what I WILL change when I make it again (damn it was good, so good I have to blog about it), and how I transcribed the recipe; turns out, actually extracting a recipe from an Instagram reel is a pain in the ass...

What I Did

My first mistake was almost before I had even started. We keep Costco chicken breasts (and ground beef) frozen by the pound in our freezer, so we only have to pick it up once every few weeks - we are extraordinarily lazy (efficient). I knew we were making chicken today, so I set it out to thaw ~6 hours beforehand, not realizing we had bought thighs specifically for this recipe! When I found my error, the chicken had already thawed, and I noticed the package I had selected had a hole in it, so the bowl was full of cloudy chicken water. Yum. I decided to just dress the breast roughly to the size of a thigh and call it good - immediately, we doubled-ish the chicken, and mixed cuts. It didn't end up changing anything, so feel free to swap in breasts.

I also wet brined the chicken for a few hours, and forewent the salt in the rub. I would encourage you to do the same, brining made it incredibly tender and flavorful, even after an hour and a half in the oven.

Otherwise, it went pretty much exactly as the recipe says. I will say, do make the salad and prep your sides (we had baked carrots and zucchini) before the chicken goes in the oven, and make sure to preheat it... it got a bit frantic with the chicken searing while figuring out how to prep cabbage. Yes, this was my first time prepping a head of cabbage. which reminds me, a head of cabbage is about 4x what you need for this recipe. Since we doubled the chicken, I doubled just about everything else (I seasoned with my heart).

Last diversion from the recipe - add ~3tbsp of mayo to the slaw, before the olive oil, which you'll want to add less of. The slaw is super fresh and crisp without it, however I'm a real fan of the added sweetness - the lime and salt are great, but I'm a soft midwesterner.

We didn't bother to rub the buns with garlic. I used Jarlic for this recipe... sue me.

I also managed to slice the absolute hell out of my finger... I bought a Wusthof Classic (I just started reading The Food Lab, by Kenji) and the balance is so different than what I'm used to - a Victorinox Fibrox. Definitely nice knives if you're on a budget - we own two - but the Wusthof is in a league of its own, which my finger was not ready for. I'm still getting used to the difference.

Extracting the Recipe

Instagram recipes buried in reels are a nightmare. I think 95% of the reason that I've only ever made two of them - the first was carrot cake cinnamon rolls from Matty Matheson - is the difficulty of extracting the information into a usable format for shopping, prep, and execution. The ingredient list might be in the description, but the video has some critical piece, so you can't just copy it out... Not to mention you can't actually manipulate text from a reel, you have to screenshot and then transcribe with Google Lens. Total nightmare.

I was able to at least somewhat circumvent that here in two ways - the author is VERY thorough in his reels, enumerating ingredients and steps. I also used my local AI, mentioned in a previous post! I held up the phone while the reel was playing, into my microphone, for an LLM to transcribe and parse into the recipe you see above. Felt pretty slick! I used Gemma3:12b.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!