On Sunday visits with my sister, I’d watch my brother-in-law grill 10 pounds of chicken wings for the week. The grates would be covered edge to edge, too many wings to count. When he finally told me his secret chicken source, I planned a small road trip to northern Guilford County, where Hopkins Poultry has operated for 97 years.
Just off Doggett Road in Browns Summit sits a modest brick building. Inside, I browsed the wooden crates of honey, jam, blackstrap molasses, and Hopkins’s famous barbecue sauce before peeking inside the industrial freezers stocked with everything from biscuits by the dozen to frog legs. I noticed, too, my fellow shoppers: Old men ground gravel under their worn tires as they arrived in trucker hats and flannels to order chicken from the counter — legs, wings, thighs, gizzards — with little chitchat.
Watch as Lynn Wells prepares her Butter-Poached Chicken Thighs.…