The TH Food Lab: The Search For Chicken Sandwich Zen, Pt. 2 - Let's Get Thicc
I upped the thickness on the meat and increased the brine time. Let's go!
The first time I tried making a fried chicken sandwich, I was pleased with my results. Yes, the breading overpowered the chicken because I used the store-sliced thin cutlets rather than actual whole boneless, skinless breasts. I didn’t brine the bird for as long as I would have liked. However, the sandwiches tasted good. When people say “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” they’re not saying never strive for perfection. They mean “don’t let a few imperfections bring you down in the moment when something good is in front of you.” At least that’s what I think they mean. I don’t know. I’ve been accused of being a colossal dumbass in the past.
Making a fried chicken sandwich at home was always going to be about the process, conducting a culinary scientific experiment. These processes require exhaustive and meticulous attention to detail, exhausting every step before coming to a conclusion. Many trappings from the first time remain. The pickles were from the same batch I bought the first time. I used chicken breast, even if I increased the thickness on it. I used hamburger buns as the bread. I fried in canola oil. I changed a few settings too though, probably more than I set out to do.
First, I bought whole boneless, skinless breasts. Even though I cut them down into quarters, the mean thickness was still at least fifty percent greater than the pre-sliced ones I used last time. The quartered breasts were all between three-eighths and one-half inch in thickness. This is ideal to have meatiness while minimizing cooking time. Also, rather than a quick brine in beer and lemon juice, I brought out the big guns: buttermilk, pickle juice, and hot sauce (Cholula to be specific). The chicken brined for roughly eight hours, which feels like the low end for most traditional buttermilk brines. I wouldn’t go more than 24 hours just because I wouldn’t want to tempt fate with the chicken going bad. I also added some salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika into the brine.
After that time, I took the bowl with the brined chicken out of the fridge and started breading. I mixed a cup of flour, a tablespoon of cornstarch, and liberal amounts of kosher salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika in a separate plate. The chicken went out of the brine, into the dredge, back into the brine, and back into the dredge for a double-coat. The fry this time remained in a cast iron vessel; I just switched it up from the trusty pan to a ceramic-lined cast iron dutch oven that I recently purchased. I wanted to go for more of a deep fry this time. I filled the container up with a full-on bottle of canola oil and heated until it got to 375-380 degrees F. I dropped the chicken pieces into the oil and let them fry. How long? Trick question. What do I always say? Judge by temperature, not time. It involves a sturdy pair of tongs and an instant read thermometer, but those things are readily available nowadays. You want to shoot for 165 degrees F, but it’s okay if you go over by a few degrees. You don’t want to be hovering over a hot pot with bubbling, scalding oil anyway.
The result should be a golden-brown piece of chicken that sounds like you’re dragging fingernails across a chalkboard when you scrape your knife across the surface. I’ve read that cornstarch helps improve the deep color on this, but generally you want to use equal proportions of starch and flour, something to remember for next time. After letting the breasts rest for a bit on a paper towel, it was time to assemble the sandwich: chicken breast, pickle, and this time, peri-peri sauce. I picked up a bottle on my last visit to Trader Joe’s, and it is a pretty snazzy hot sauce. It’s also close enough to the spicy remoulade that Popeye’s has for its own sandwich that it helped replicate the flavor of what I consider to be the pinnacle.
Overall, what were my thoughts on this attempt? There were improvements. I liked how much meatier the sandwich was. A good chicken sandwich should have heft. As much as everyone loves breading, you don’t just want to eat starch with a thin layer of protein. The brine method might be better tweaked to do all buttermilk or all pickle juice next time. I also think I’ll leave out the seasoning from the brine and leave it just to the flour. I’ll also probably try equal parts cornstarch-flour to see how that improves the breading texture.
As for future tweaks, there are big ones on the horizon, mainly dealing with the oil and the chicken part. I want to use peanut oil next time. I’ve had trouble finding it, but it’s not a unicorn ingredient as it’s fairly common in kitchens around the country. I just need to look harder. Thighs will be easier to find because they are trendy as heck right now. I also feel like thighs may be more forgiving on the cook as well as flavor-wise. We shall see.
Either way, I feel like this was a successful test on the road to chicken sandwich nirvana. I don’t know when I’ll be settled into something that I can call a “regular” recipe, but part of the reason why I decided to make this my holy grail attempt was because chicken sandwiches are so good anyway that the journey could be just as fulfilling as the destination. It’s truly the kind of thing where “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” is not just a cliché but a mantra.