Alabama White Sauce Chicken
Roasted chicken pieces dunked in a tangy white barbecue sauce of mayonnaise, vinegar, horseradish and black pepper.
Photograph credit: Grilled chicken with Alabama white BBQ sauce by Dana L. Brown · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Make Ahead and Storage
The chicken keeps in the fridge for 3 days; the sauce keeps in a jar for 1 week.
How to Make Alabama White Sauce Chicken
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Heat the oven to 220°C / 430°F. Toss the chicken with the oil, salt and paprika and spread on a baking tray.
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Roast for 45 minutes, turning once, until the skin is crisp and the juices run clear.
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Whisk the mayonnaise, vinegar, lemon juice, horseradish, pepper, sugar and hot sauce until smooth.
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Dunk the hot chicken in the sauce, or pour half over, and serve the rest in a bowl.
Worth Knowing
- Use freshly ground black pepper for the best flavour.
- Keep the sauce cold; add it to hot chicken, not the other way round.
- Thin the sauce with a spoonful of water if it is too thick.
Some Background
Forget the red. Alabama white sauce is a mayonnaise-based sauce, thinned with vinegar and sharpened with horseradish and plenty of black pepper, and it was developed to go with smoked chicken. It looks odd and tastes brilliant: creamy, tart and peppery, with a heat that creeps up.
The chicken is cooked first and the sauce is applied after, which keeps the mayonnaise from splitting in the heat. Roast chicken thighs and drumsticks at a high temperature, 220°C / 430°F, and the skin crisps while the meat stays juicy. Then dunk each piece in the sauce, or pour it over, and serve the rest in a bowl.
Add the vinegar slowly while whisking so the sauce stays smooth. The sauce should be thin enough to coat a spoon but not run off it. Taste it with a hot piece of chicken, since the heat softens the sharpness. Use plenty of fresh black pepper; it is the signature note.
Good Alongside
Coleslaw · Potato salad · Baked beans · Green salad
What's in a Serving
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: weights that include bone are counted as if all of it were eaten, so the figures run high. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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