hello this is chef john from food wishes dot caramel with fried chicken sandwich
that's right because of all the recent hoopla I attempted to make a copycat
Popeye's fried chicken sandwich and you'll be happy to know I was actually
very successful in making a copycat chick-fil-a fried chicken sandwich at
least appearance and texture wise the taste really was very close to Popeyes
so I guess what we have here is the best of both worlds and to get started with
this incredibly delicious hybrid what we'll do first is make our marinade
which is going to consist of some buttermilk some salt some hot sauce and
then by far the most important ingredient in this entire operation some
dry ranch dressing mix and then what I'm using here is from a certain Valley
that's fairly well hidden but anyway we'll go ahead mix this up and the
reason for the dressing mix is not just because of the herbs and spices it's
because it contains copious amounts of MSG which in case you're wondering is
really the reason that people line up for fast food right besides the
convenience and low prices ok it's a proven scientific fact that MSG makes
everything taste better like a lot better and some might even say
addictively better and then what we'll do once our marinades mixed let's go
ahead and find a couple chicken breasts to toss in there now what I'm using here
is some boneless skinless breasts which do not contain the Tenderloin or filet
or finger as it's called ok so if you see that piece of finger shave me you
should probably pull it out and use it in a salad and then one thing I like to
do before we dunk these is take a sharp knife and make a few relatively shallow
slashes in the thick end all right like 3 or 4 one way and 3 or 4 the other and
you may have actually seen us do this trick when we prep chicken for the grill
and what that's gonna do is help our marinade get into the chicken a little
better plus it will also help that thicken cook a little more evenly in
relationship to the thinner end and then what we'll do once those are prepped is
go ahead and toss them in our marinade until they're very well coated and
submerged and once that's been accomplished what we'll do is transfer
this into the fridge to marinate for anywhere between two and four hours all
right that is my recommendation some people say you can go overnight but for
me that might be a little too long and then what we'll do well that's
chilling in the fridge is go ahead and make up our breading mix which is gonna
be mostly all-purpose flour to which we will add a little bit of corn starch as
well as some salt along with its good friend freshly ground black pepper and
of course some cayenne and not a little a lot if you want your fried chicken
breast spicy which I do and then we can finish up with the rest of our dry and
ranch dressing mix powder because msg and please note I added that with one
spoon and then grabbed a different spoon to give this a mix for no apparent
reason and then once that is combined we can move on to the final component the
wash which for me is going to be nothing more than one egg plus some buttermilk
and a little splash of regular milk and once that's all in there we'll give it a
mix and by the way in future experiments with this recipe I'm gonna figure out a
way to turn our marinade into our wash but for now we're just gonna do it
separate and that's it once all our components are ready and our breasts
have marinated for a sufficient amount of time we can begin the breading
process and that will involve using a fork to pull our chicken out of our
marinade and we will add almost all the excess drip off at which point we will
coat that very thoroughly on both sides with our seasoned flour breading mix and
for filming / demonstration purposes I'm just gonna do one here so I'm gonna go
ahead and pop that other one back in the fridge so I can make that for Michelle
later and then what we'll do after that first flour just go ahead and shake off
the excess before giving it a dip in our wash and then once that surface has been
saturated we will go back into the flour again coating it very thoroughly on both
sides and we are actually going to do this twice which is hopefully going to
give us a nice thick sort of gnarly in a regular surface which will hopefully fry
up nice and crispy and crunchy and I'm not sure but for some reason I switch to
my hands here which did not work as well as the fork right your fingertips are
gonna sort of rub off that coating so when you do this just use the fork all
the way through oh and I should mention some people claim that Popeyes uses corn
flakes in this breading which they say creates that extra crunchy surface but
I've eaten a lot of that stuff as in like a dangerous amount
I've never really seen or tasted what I thought were cornflakes so I'm not
really sure about that and of course if you have any inside info let me know but
anyway getting back to this I managed to give it the OL double-dip after which I
transferred it down to this rack so we can let it dry for at least 50 minutes
before we fry it okay you really do want to give your coatings time to adhere
before you fry things and at this point I was thinking this is looking pretty
good right that surface sort of looked like what I was going for although some
people say you can dip and dredge that like three or four times to get even
more of a gnarly coating and maybe more similar to what you see a Popeye's but
anyway I stopped it - and like I said we're gonna let this sit for at least
fifteen minutes before it hits the hot oil which of course you've heated up all
your waiting to a temperature of 350 to 375 and once up to temp we will
carefully place that in and we're going to go ahead and fry this for about four
to five minutes depending on the size of your breasts or until it's beautifully
golden brown and crispy and safely cooked through and you don't have to but
about halfway through I gave mine a flip because I really do love to play with my
food and yes in case you're wondering you can totally pan fry this and like an
inch of oil in a cast-iron skillet that will work just fine if you don't have a
deep fryer so that's up to you I mean you guys are after all the olive oils of
your fried chicken sandwich toils and I don't mean olive oil the oil
I mean olive oil Popeye's girlfriend which is spelled o yl and if you know
that you're old but anyway like I said we'll go ahead and cook this for about
four or five minutes at which point we'll pull that out and transfer it onto
some crinkled up foil and that's so the bottom doesn't get soggy which can
happen if you drain this on a paper towel since that bottom will steam but
here with the foil we have room for that to escape and speaking of crispy this
sure looked right but of course we have to check and as you well know fork don't
live
in fact I saw someone wearing a t-shirt that said that the other day but anyway
that sounded just about right on both sides and I couldn't wait to see if it
tasted right so I spread some mayo on a lightly buttered and toasted hamburger
bun and for the full fast-food experience do not buy some beautiful
artisan bun from a bakery right go to the grocery store and look for the
package that has the most ingredients because that's the one you want another
than the Mayo the only other thing this is gonna get us some sliced dill pickles
and then we will place our absolutely gorgeous chicken breast on the top and
then lean our bun like this and take a bunch of pictures at which point we'll
place our bun directly on top I'd take a bunch more pictures and then finally
about 10 minutes later I went in for a bite
which as you're about to hear was still very crispy and just as importantly
incredibly delicious all right that meat was super juicy and flavorful and really
was reminiscent of Popeye's fried chicken but while that Kodi really was
beautifully crunchy it really did not have the same level of crispness the
Popeye's fried chicken does and was way way more similar to a chick-fil-a
sandwich which I realized is good news for some of you but bad news for others
so like I said in the intro I somehow ended up with a hybrid of both versions
but there was one problem that really doesn't even sound like a problem to
large breasts okay the breasts I use were like 8 ounces and what you really
want for this sandwich is like something between 4 & 6
all right the chicken that crispy breading ratio is off here and when you
have this amount of steaming moist meat and that thin amount of codeine it's
actually going to start to separate and come off as you can probably notice from
these eating shots which is not like an actual serious problem like fast food
addiction oh and one other thing that wasn't really a problem was this coating
not staying crunchy after sitting for a while right this was like over 15
minutes later
and as you can hear it still had the sound to astound but anyway that says my
attempt at a crispy fried chicken sandwich while this didn't come out
exactly like the ones that those aforementioned chains it was still very
very good and by being able to make this at home you don't have to worry about
some fast-food store running out and if you want you could eat these on Sunday
so amen to that and I'll finish by saying I really do hope you give this a
try soon so head over to food which is calm for all the ingredient amounts of
more info as usual and as always
you