Chicken Bog

First mentioned in a South Carolina newspaper in 1910, Chicken Bog gets its name from the fact that it appears that the chicken is bogged down by the rice, a texture that also recalls the bogs of the Lowcountry. Chicken Bog in essence resembles chicken pilau with the difference that a pilau is much dryer than a bog.

Originally, bog was cooked and served in a wash kettle or iron cauldron outdoors to accommodate large crowds. It became, like pine bark stew, one of the central dishes of large-scale outdoor and event cooking. (A pilau, by contrast, is meant to be cooked in the home.) Its first home was the Pee Dee region on the eastern side of the state, bog became so popular in the town of Loris that during the last quarter of the twentieth century they began hosting annual “Chicken Bog-Offs.”