Key Takeaways
- Chicken bog is a Lowcountry dish that combines rice, chicken, smoked sausage, and other ingredients.
- The name might come from its moist consistency or the swampy areas of South Carolina where it originated.
- This one-pot meal is influenced by the state’s rice-growing history and the Gullah Geechee cuisine.
Chicken bog, a simple pilaf-style dish made with rice and chicken, is a South Carolina staple that has stood the test of time. Somewhere between a casserole and a stew, nobody quite knows where chicken bog got its name—some say it stems from its composition (the chicken is, quite literally, bogged down in rice), while others insist it’s a nod to the marshlands of the Lowcountry. That said, here’s what we do know about chicken bog:
What Is Chicken Bog?
Traditional chicken bog is made by boiling a whole chicken until tender, discarding the skins and bones, then adding white rice to absorb the stock. The dish often contains smoked sausage, onions, and various spices.
Damon Lee Fowler, culinary historian and cookbook author, defines chicken bog as “a highly localized form of pilau, probably of African provenance, in the U.S. found only in South Carolina.”
How Rice Is Ingrained In Carolina Cuisine
Rice was South Carolina’s main agricultural product until the early 20th-century. The crop dominated the state’s economy and influenced almost every facet of life in the Lowcountry, from livelihoods to local cuisines. The bulk of North American rice production shifted from The Palmetto State to Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas after the Civil War.
Of course, South Carolina’s relationship with rice—and thus its relationship with wealth—was built primarily on slave labor. Enslaved people were the ones to clear the state’s wooded swampland with rough tools, and they were also the ones to create the massive hydrological systems for rice field irrigation…