Spicy Chicken Sandwiches

This recipe for Spicy Chicken Sandwiches was originally housed in my ebook We Got Food at The House. In case you missed it, all of the recipes in my ebooks are being rewritten and added directly to the website. I don’t want y’all to have to pay for my recipes; ideally, I can be compensated for my labor adequately by companies that I explicitly and implicitly put y’all on to via advertisements.

The sandwiches are more simple to put together than it seems: the hardest part is preparing the chicken! Most fast food joints – Popeyes, Zaxby’s, Bojangles – serve their chicken sandwiches on brioche, and I followed suit. I baked the buns pictured here, using King Arthur Baking’s Brioche Buns recipe. Storebough brioche would work just fine. I think Kings Hawaiian would be a great twist on these Spicy Chicken Sandwiches, too.

What You’ll Need To Make ‘Em

Feel free to jump to the full recipe, but here are useful notes about the ingredients you will need to make this Spicy Chicken Sandwiches recipe:

• Boneless skinless chicken breasts:
• Buttermilk:
• All-purpose flour, cornstarch:
• Cajun seasoning, poultry seasoning, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, kosher salt:
• Mayonnaise, hot sauce, honey, pickled jalapeno juice:
• Brioche buns, dill pickle slices:

How to Make Spicy Chicken Sandwiches

Full instructions are included in the recipe below, but here is a basic overview of what you’ll need to do, along with some important tidbits to help you make the most of this Spicy Chicken Sandwiches recipe:

• Season the Chicken. Add your chicken to a medium-sized bowl and season it with all of the poultry seasoning. Feel free to add more if you think it needs it – they’re your tastebuds! After seasoning go ahead and pour in the buttermilk and hot sauce. Stir to get the chicken coated well in the liquid, then cover and set aside. If you’re not cooking it immediately cover it with a lid and stick it in the fridge instead. Make sure to pull it out about 30 minutes before you’re ready to dredge and fry.
• Make the Sauce. Our Spicy Chicken Sandwiches are spicy two different ways. Toss all of the ingredients listed under ‘sauce’ into a small bowl and whisk them together. Give it a taste. Bland? Add salt. No heat? Add more cayenne. Too sweet? Jalapeno juice! Too spicy? More honey! When you’re happy, set that aside, too. 
• It’s crunchy craggy time! Grab yet another bowl – another medium-sized one. We’re making the flour dredge in this one, but first, we need to decide how you’re going to create the crunchy craggies. – the little bits that fall off the chicken when you bite it. My usual method is mixing together the flour, cornstarch, and cajun seasoning in the bowl, then using a fork to drip little bits of buttermilk brine into the flour and giving it a stir. My new method is pouring a tablespoon or so of buttermilk into the bowl first, turning the bowl around so the buttermilk coats the sides of the bowl, and then adding the flour dredge ingredients. When I stir the flour, cornstarch, and seasonings together, I’ll make sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl as I go, to create crunchy craggies. The more crunchy craggies the better on these Spicy Chicken Sandwiches.
• Dredge the Chicken. After the flour mixture is created go ahead and start dredging the chicken! Remove the chicken pieces from the buttermilk mixture, allow the excess to drip off, then add the chicken to the flour. Coat the chicken pieces well, pressing the flour into the chicken. I like to pick the pieces up and squeeze them in my fist to ensure the flour really sticks. 
• Prepare to fry. Let the chicken rest while you preheat the oil. Add a few inches of oil to a heavy-bottomed pot and place it over medium-high heat. Choose a saucepan or some other type of pan with higher sides because we’re deep frying! Heat the oil until it reaches about 375°F. If you don’t have a thermometer use a wooden spoon or chopstick to test the oil: when you stick it in the oil you should hear and see a sizzle about a second after you add it. 
• It’s time to fry! Very gently add your pieces of chicken to the pan. Don’t just drop it in: hold the chicken by the edge and drag it across/thru the surface of the oil before you let go. This helps the coating ‘set’ so you lose less of it during the dry. Add the chicken in batches if you need to: you want the chicken to have room to dance around in the oil without bumping into each other while it cooks. Let the chicken fry for about 7-10 minutes, flipping after 5 minutes. They will float when they’re done, but be careful and make sure they’re cooked through by either pulling one and slicing it open to check, or using an internal thermometer to check. If your chicken is still cold from the fridge or maybe the pieces are very thick, it can take up to 20 minutes to cook all the way. 165°F internally is safe for poultry. Drain the chicken on a wire rack over a baking sheet (in the oven on the lowest setting if you’re going in batches to keep it warm). 
• You’ve got Spicy Chicken Sandwiches. Toast your buns and spread the sauce on them. Add pickles for those people in your house that believe for some reason that pickles belong on chicken sandwiches, and enjoy! Dassit! 

Obligatory Pinterest Graphics –

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