Country Dutch Oven Chicken

 During our camping trip this year, we decided to make some Dutch Oven and the recipe winner was this Country Dutch Oven Chicken. Our first attempt was okay, so we spiced this up a bit with a few tweaks and here is the recipe we landed on. Enjoy! Scott liked this chicken with some fresh cut-up pineapple and thought it would be good over potatoes or rice as well.

Country Dutch Oven Chicken

1 1/2 trays raw chicken cut into tenders (maybe 2-3 lbs) 

3 cans cream of chicken soup (or 1 can each cream of celery, mushroom and chicken)

1 bottle BBQ sauce

1 package bacon

1 small onion

salt and pepper

• Chop bacon and onion into small pieces. In a small sauce pan, cook bacon and onion until bacon is crispy and onion is tender and browed. 
• Cut raw chicken into bite-sized pieces. Place in Dutch Oven and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
• Scrape bacon and onions, drippings and all, over chicken in Dutch Oven. If there is a lot of browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, de-glaze pan by boiling a small amount of water in the pan until all the bits come off the bottom and then pour the liquid over the chicken as well.
• Mix together your cream soups with the bottle of BBQ and add it to your Dutch Oven. Stir everything to combine and then cook until chicken reaches 160 degrees internal temperature or is no longer pink.

Notes- Cooking in a Dutch Oven with coals or briquettes can be tricky. If you are a pro, you can cook the bacon and onion first in the Dutch Oven and then add the chicken and sauce over the top. Scott and I had some difficulty getting the pot hot enough to really get the bacon crispy, so the second time we made this, I just cooked it over a camp stove while Scott got the Dutch Oven ready for the chicken. To keep from losing too much heat from lifting the lid and checking everything over and over, we used a remote temperature probe so we could know when the chicken was done (160 degrees or so) without lifting the lid.