Chicken Bog is a Low Country stew served across the PeeDee region in Eastern South Carolina. Chicken is boiled until it comes off the bone, the stock highly seasoned with pepper and rice and sausage added. The art of bog-making lies in the proportion of rice to stock and chicken, with cooking time. For the dish to be a classic bog, it cannot end up gummy nor can it be watery. Bogmaster Thomas Shelley says that the traditional rural dish was a “way to help out your neighbor”, a communal stew cooked when tobacco or corn was harvested and used to feed all the neighboring farmers who came to help with the harvest. Chicken bog also ‘extended’ the meat available at the family meal.

Annual political rallies like the annual Galivant’s Ferry Stump Meeting feature chicken bog as it is a “congregational food” that can feed the hundreds of South Carolinians who turn out to hear the political speeches. Galivant’s Ferry Stump Meeting alone has an over 120-year old history of serving chicken bog.