The Ultimate Fried Chicken Sandwich

This is the ultimate fried chicken sandwich: crispy chicken, crunchy slaw, and flavorful sauce all tucked into a toasted bun. You don’t need a deep fryer or fancy gear – just a few key tricks to make it perfect.

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This is no ordinary fried chicken sandwich. This is the fried chicken sandwich. We’ll begin by marinating our chicken. I’ll be using boneless, skinless chicken thighs since they’re juicier and harder to overcook. I’m going to cover these up with some buttermilk. That’ll break down the protein in the chicken to make it more tender, as well as some hot sauce. And before covering it up, I’m going to get in there and make sure everything is fully mixed through. If you want to use chicken breast for this recipe, you definitely can, but it may not be as tender. And you want to be sure to pound them to a nice even thickness. At this point, I’m going to cover my chicken and place this in the refrigerator for 2 hours or preferably overnight. And voila, movie magic. But our chicken is not quite ready yet. There’s one more step to lock in that flavor. And that is to lay our chicken down on a paper towel line sheet tray and refrigerate uncovered for 2 to 6 hours. This will help to get a crispier and more flavorful fried chicken. And one last thing, make sure to keep this leftover marinade cuz we’re going to use this later. While our chicken does its thing in the fridge, we’re going to get our frying oil, and our dredging station ready to go. For this, I’m just using a simple neutral oil. And while that heats up, I’ll jump on over here to prepare my dredging station. To begin, I’ll go into a small bowl with some garlic powder, black pepper, a little salt, some onion powder, dry mustard, and a little paprika. Now, I’ll stir this up until fully combined and no clumps remain. And we can go grab our chicken. After the fridge, your chicken should look something like this. Now, using half of the seasoning blend that we just made, we’ll go ahead and season our chicken, making sure to sprinkle from nice and high up. And very important, don’t forget to flip them all over and do the exact same thing on the other side. Normally, when people make fried chicken, they only season inside the dredge itself. But if you do it this way, you get more direct seasoning and flavor right on the chicken. Save the rest of the seasoning and set your chicken off to the side while you go now to make your actual wet and dry dredges. This first bowl here will be for our wet dredge. And all we need is one whole egg cracked right into that bowl, as well as a little splash of water. I’ll give this a quick mix until fully combined. It should look almost a little milky. And then we’ll jump over here to our dry dredge, which includes some rice flour, all-purpose flour, a little potato starch, a sprinkle of baking powder, and most importantly, the rest of our seasoning blend. Give it a quick whisk to fully combine. And now, as the finishing touch, we’ll add in just a few little sprinkles of that wet marinade from earlier. And then I’ll get in there with my hands to start mixing this up. This is one of the most important steps in making a great fried chicken sandwich. Because if you take a close look at this flour here, what it does is create a bunch of small little crumbs. And when you go to fry your chicken, these little bits here will become those perfect crispy morsels that make for the most amazing bite. You want to keep these crispy bits nice and small, but just big enough that they’re going to add that texture. To dredge, I’ll take my chicken and drop it first in the wet mixture, making sure to fully coat it. And after a little shake to drain off any of that excess liquid, I’ll move it over to my dry dredge, which I’m going to switch hands for so mine don’t get caked up as they go back and forth between the wet and dry. I’m not trying to dredge myself. I’m trying to dredge the chicken here. I find it’s most effective if you really press the chicken into that dredge. And usually, I’ll even give the chicken a few squeezes to make sure that dredge really sticks. When the chicken looks like this, it’s ready to move over and go in for the first fry. I like to sway it back and forth to gradually ease it into the oil. And while that begins to cook, I’ll jump over and continue dredging my other pieces. We’ll be frying our chicken in two stages. The first I call the cooking stage. It’s what we’re doing right now, where we cook at a lower temperature to cook the chicken all the way through. In just a few moments, we’ll move to the frying stage where we turn that oil temperature up and get that beautiful golden brown crust. You see all those nice crackly looking bits on this chicken here? That’s a good preview of what this should look like after it fries. And since these are such big pieces, I’m only going to fry them here in batches. So, we’ll do two at a time. Check that out. We’re going for those crispy pieces that are just leaping off the chicken. These are what will give you the best, most mouthwatering bite of fried chicken you’ve ever tasted. Remember to constantly be changing the heat and monitoring that oil temperature as you cook here. Because when you put something big and cold like a piece of fried chicken in, that temperature is going to shoot straight down. While our first round of chicken fries, I’m going to add a little bit more of that wet mixture into our dry dredge here to create a few more of those crispy bits. Sometimes you may not need to add anything extra at all, but just be monitoring your mixture to make sure it always has enough of those clumpy bits. Without breaking any of our beautiful crispy bits here, I’m going to check the internal temp of my chicken. And once it reaches about 160 Fahrenheit, we can go ahead and set it aside. And while those rest for a few minutes, we can prep our other pieces of chicken. In case you’re curious, by the way, this method that we’re doing here is exactly what they do at places like KFC or Popeye’s. See all those little bits that are jumping out of the sides in this chicken sandwich here? Those are all achieved using the exact same method that we’re doing here. But now I’m realizing that I just used my raw chicken hands to touch this. So maybe I’ll give it to my dog for dinner. Notice I always keep my oil temperature higher than where I want it to actually land when I’m putting anything big into it. That way when it falls, it lands close to where I want it to be. I’m being very delicate as I move these around in the oil. It’s very easy to break those crispy bits off. We’ll let the oil heat up and let these rest for about 15 to 20 minutes while we go prep our toppings. This right here is the secret sauce. It starts with a little bit of mayonnaise. Then a little bit of honey for some sweetness. Then we’ve got some mustard, a few pinches of red pepper flakes, then the zest of one whole lemon. I know it’s a lot of zest, but it’ll balance all that fat from the fried chicken. Then I’m also going to slice the lemon in half and squeeze the juice. And we’ll finish with a pinch of salt and a little black pepper. This will give us a well balanced sauce with acidity from the lemon, some sweetness from the honey, a little heat from the chili, and fat from the mayo. And it is delicious. While our sauce is in the fridge, we’re going to prep our sllo. Here I’ve got some green cabbage and purple cabbage, both of which I’m going to chop up into nice fine strips like this. The thing is, no fried chicken sandwich is complete without a nice slaw that goes with it. Not only does it add flavor, but it also adds lots of color and texture. So, I think it’s very important. In addition to our cabbage, we’ve also got some shallot. This is a nice sweet onion that’s going to add that oniony flavor without being too overpowering in our sllo. And then we’ve got these carrots, which I’m going to use a peeler to create these nice ribbons with, but you’re more than welcome to just chop them quickly with your knife if you want. Once we’ve prepped all of these, I’ll bring in a bowl. I’m going to add a little bit of pickle juice, but not the pickles quite yet. Then my mayonnaise, a little mustard, a nice sprinkle of poppy seeds, then some honey, a little salt, and a bit of fresh cracked pepper. And now I’ll give this a quick whisk to make sure it’s fully combined. And then I’m going to layer my ingredients in a way that makes sure my slaw doesn’t get soggy before I plate my sandwich. So on the bottom go my chopped pickles. Then on top of that I’ll put my shallots, then my shredded carrots, and then on top of this goes all of my cabbage. I’m sure at some point you’ve had a really soggy kleslaw. And that’s exactly what happens if you leave it sitting in a liquid for too long. But if we put it in the fridge now like this and then mix it all together just before we assemble our sandwich, we get that ultimate maximum crunch. It’s time for the second stage of the frying process, the crisping stage. And this time we’re frying at a higher oil temp and all of our chicken can cook at the same time. A note for safety at home, by the way, is you should probably have your oil level a little bit lower than mine, but I like to keep it up nice and high so you can see things really easily while I demonstrate. The goal of this stage in the frying process is to lock in all that flavor and get a nice, beautiful golden brown crust. And while this cooks, I’m going to jump over here and switch out the paper towels on my wire rack line sheet tray. When we rest the chicken, these are going to soak up some of that excess oil. But having the wire rack underneath, make sure there’s still air flow so nothing gets soggy. Whenever your chicken is beautifully golden brown and crispy, you can go ahead and rest it off to the side. It will and should get darker at this stage, but it’s already fully cooked, so you can pull it whenever you want. And with our chicken done, we’ve got one last optional step before plating, which is toasting our buns. I like toasting my buns in part to get a crispy texture on top, but also to steam it so we get it a little soft and fluffy. By leaving the two halves attached like this, you create this pocket in the middle where things get really soft and steamy on the inside. This step shouldn’t take too long. Once the bun looks toasted like this, we’re ready to plate. When it comes to plating, I’m going to keep things simple. We’ll add our sauce right on the bottom. Don’t go too far to the edges or it may spill right over. Then we’ll add our crispy fried chicken. And just like I said before, we’re going to mix our sllo up very last second. That way it’s still nice and crunchy. And then on we go. And that is how you make a fried chicken sandwich. I forgot to put the stick in there. That’s better. [Music]