How Babish Makes His Perfect Fried Chicken Sandwich: Every Choice, Every Step

When you're making a spicy fried chicken sandwich at home,

you need to make a lot of decisions.

You need to pick your chicken, buns, sauces,

your toppings, condiments, and so many more.

Some ingredients can make your chicken

juicy, crispy, and delicious,

while others can make it dry, palate, or soggy.

My name is Andrew Rea, AKA Babish,

and this is every decision I make

in whipping up my ultimate spicy fried chicken sandwich.

When I'm taking my first bite

of a spicy fried chicken sandwich,

I want it to be crispy, first and foremost,

then juicy, then flavorful, in that order.

If you want the ultimate fried chicken sandwich experience,

you need to be intentional

in picking each step of the process,

starting with arguably the most important step.

[gentle upbeat music]

Chicken.

Even though these are all chicken,

they're gonna yield a different product

with a different moisture content, fat content,

texture, flavor, and overall quality.

There are some objectively right

and wrong answers on this table.

Let's start with the wrongest answer.

Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs.

These would make for great fried chicken,

but I'm not sure if you've ever tried to eat a sandwich

with a bone in it.

It's not gonna go your way.

Very typical to leave skin on when making fried chicken,

but in a sandwich situation,

you might just pull the whole thing out

and embarrass yourself in front of your entire church.

Next strongest option are these guys.

[packaging rustling]

These are processed, they might be made from white meat,

but it's all chopped up and formed into a patty.

This is not one piece of breast.

This tastes exactly

like the entirety of a high school cafeteria.

The furniture, the milk,

so it's kind of nostalgic in that way, it's kind of fun,

but pretty gross otherwise.

Now, on to chicken breast tenders.

It's this sort of little channel of meat

that runs barely connected to the rest of the breast.

So this could be a good solution

if you stacked three of these together.

And if you stack some mozzarella sticks in there

for extra credit,

you get an A in my class.

I'm not gonna go with that

because I think it might not be the best option.

Chicken breast versus chicken thigh.

Perfectly viable options for a fried chicken sandwich.

What you're gonna get over here with the chicken thigh

is you're gonna get a really moist,

more chicken flavor forward patty.

This is a great option.

Next up, the breast.

This has no fat content, virtually no flavor content.

If you overcook this by a whisper,

it's gonna cook up really, really dry.

That being said,

deep frying is an ideal environment to cook chicken breasts

because it's getting cooked quickly

and at not too crazy a temperature.

If you just drop this straight in the oil,

it'd be terrible.

With the breading, it's got this shell around it

that's going to keep it from getting strained dry,

and you're gonna end up with a moist,

juicy piece of chicken.

I think this is what I'm gonna go with today.

Before we turn these into a sandwich,

we have to address their thickness.

These are already pretty thin breasts,

so all we really need to do with them, I think,

is pound them out.

That is both to tenderize them to even out their thickness

so that they cook evenly and those two things.

So this is the chicken I'm gonna be using

for my spicy fried chicken sandwich.

But before I can bread and cook it, I have to brine it.

[gentle upbeat music]

Brining accomplishes three main things:

helps the chicken stay moist,

it imbues it with flavor, and it tenderizes it.

So I'm gonna make a brine.

The base of my brine is buttermilk.

First off, it has a pleasant tang and it has enzymes in it

that are gonna break down some of the proteins

or something in the chicken

and help make it more tender.

Pickle brine. How good does that sound?

Fried chicken with pickle flavor in it, like that's awesome.

The only thing you want to make sure

that you got right is your salinity.

You wanna make sure there's a good amount of salt.

Not too much, not too little.

But I'm still kind of eyeball it, so whatever.

Then, I've got a little dash of hot sauce here.

Cayenne pepper is borderline flavorless,

but it's extraordinarily spicy

because this brine is going to go on

to be the liquid element of our breading.

I wanna throw an egg in there.

This just add structure.

[container clattering]

So now, chicken goes in here.

I wouldn't go less than four hours on this.

One day, I think, is ideal. Overnight, ideal.

So here's my chicken

that's brining for my chicken sandwich.

Now, an essential element

of any fried chicken sandwich is...

[gentle upbeat music]

the breading.

We're breading

because we obviously want our chicken sandwich to be crispy.

If I ordered a fried chicken sandwich

and there were no breading on it,

I would be, to say the least, confused

and, say, the most offended.

We have lots of different options.

Let's roll through them.

We have plain breadcrumbs.

It's a very, very fine-grained breadcrumb.

This will work in a pinch.

It's bread and you're frying it.

That's delicious.

It's gonna be fine,

but it's not bringing enough personality to the party.

I don't think it's gonna make our chicken crispy enough.

Next up, we have panko.

This is a strong contender.

Panko is a lighter, airier Japanese-style bread crumb.

It's going to create a wonderfully crisp crust,

but let's keep going.

We have good old-fashioned flour.

This is the classic way to go to make fried chicken,

particularly Nashville hot chicken.

So this is a tempting option.

Next up, we have Flamin' Hot Cheetos,

which we contractually have to do because it's the internet.

But the cameras are horizontal.

We're not making TikToks here,

so I'm not gonna make a freaking

Flamin' Hot Cheeto-breaded mozzarella stick,

whatever [beep] fest.

Then, we have seasoned breadcrumbs.

These are the same as the ones over there yonder,

but they have usually Italian seasonings in them.

Not only is it the same texture

as the plain unseasoned breadcrumbs over here,

but these spices,

they're gonna be directly exposed to the heat,

which is gonna burn them.

And they also have a flavor profile

that I'm not going for in this sandwich.

Then, we got corn flakes, which is a very fun option.

Hell, they even have a picture of fried chicken

on the back of the box.

'Cause this is a great way to add bigger flakes of crunch.

If I'm going to use this,

[corn flakes crunching]

I'm gonna crunch it up like that

so that it's more of an element of the breading,

rather than these big old honking flakes sticking out.

We have one more option to consider and that is batter.

And that's a very tempting option, but it's not crunchy.

It's crispy, it's not as crunchy.

So here's what I'm thinking.

My favorite spicy fried chicken is Nashville-style.

I don't think I can use panko

as much as I really truly want to.

I'm sure I would incur the wrath

of the entire state of Tennessee.

Instead, what I'm gonna do

is I'm going to do a flour breading

and I'm going to crush up some corn flakes in there

for a little added crunch.

So let's do that.

We have this lovely combination of milk and eggs right here

that the chicken has bean brining in.

And just add a little bit of crunch.

I'm going to supplement my flour

with some crunched-up corn flakes.

I'm just gonna season it with salt and pepper.

Layer flavors, always a good idea.

The other thing that we're gonna do

to make sure that the crust of our chicken is crackly

and filled with nooks and crannies of crispy delights,

stir a bit of our liquid right into the batter.

This is going to create flakes of breading

that are going to give us a crispier, more robust crust.

Now, straight into the flour.

We're really well-coated there, but we're not done.

We're gonna double-bread these suckers.

So by doubling it up, we're doubling the crisp.

Look, look, look at how textured this is.

That's gonna fry up super crispy.

That's what I like to see,

this sort of wrinkled, crackled surface

that is going to translate to an epic crust.

There we go.

This is my marinated and breaded chicken.

Next up, we have to choose...

[gentle upbeat music]

our buns.

I want it to be dense and kind of toothsome.

I really like a kind of a chewy,

something not too flavorful, definitely not crumbly or dry.

Waffles are an interesting pick,

but these don't age terribly well.

After you've made the fresh, hot, crisp waffle,

it turns into something a little bit more floppy,

and dense, and chewy.

Biscuits, another novel idea.

A primary characteristic of biscuits is crumbliness.

These degrade very quickly.

These were probably relatively tasty, fresh out of the oven.

Now, they're kind of bricked.

Then, we have potato hamburger rolls.

I like potato rolls versus just straight-up wheat buns

because they tend to have like a sort of chewier,

more toothsome texture, which is what I want in a sandwich.

These guys are totally acceptable.

But for the size of the chicken that we're working with,

I think a little insubstantial.

Normie hamburger buns.

These are still pretty chewy, but not quite.

They're very insubstantial.

I feel like if they got too much moisture on them,

they'd fall apart or they'd compress into nothing.

Then, last but not least, brioche,

which normally I can't stand behind

when it comes to burgers especially,

but also fried chicken sandwiches.

A little more acceptable with fried chicken.

With burgers, I'm just not a fan.

They're too sweet, they're too rich.

However, hear me out.

This is the right size, this is the size I'm going for.

I got those big chicken breasts, they're huge.

They're gonna contract a little bit when they cook,

but they're still gonna be a big old thing.

If I try to put those on these, it's gonna look cartoonish.

I'll be made a fool of.

And we're making this super, duper, duper spicy.

A fatty sweet role actually plays pretty nice with it.

I think this can stand up to it, especially if we toast it.

Normally not my top pick at all,

but on this table, this is the move.

Next step, we gotta toast our buns.

This is an essential step

in sandwich and burger craft alike.

It helps protect the bun from moisture,

it adds flavor, it adds texture.

Why isn't there a toaster on this table?

I'll tell you why.

I don't want to toast both sides of the bread.

I just want the interior toasted.

If we toast both sides, that might dry it out.

These guys into a heated cast-iron pan, non-stick skillet,

whatever you want to use.

We got a little smoke going here.

Oh, wow, okay, that's perfect.

This thing runs hot.

Let these sit cut side up on your countertop,

or if you really wanna prevent them from getting soggy,

you can throw them on a rack.

And here's the buns all toasted and ready to go.

So now we've picked out our bun,

but what's going on that bun?

[gentle upbeat music]

Sauces.

Our chicken is going to be extremely flavorful.

Any sauces that we're gonna add

shouldn't be stealing the spotlight.

So we need a texture and flavor that are gonna play nice

with the big ones that we got going on.

Honey mustard and fried chicken go together

like honey mustard and fried chicken.

They're a classic and timeless combination

that I'm not gonna be exploring in the sandwich.

I prefer that more in a chicken fingers scenario.

Ranch, it could totally work,

but very strong flavors in the opposite direction,

which can be a good thing,

but I think this is a bridge too far.

If it's bottled, it's gonna be a little runny too,

so you're gonna have a drippy situation going on here.

So I probably wouldn't go with ranch.

Ketchup.

Nah, I don't think so.

I feel like it just classes down the sandwich

pretty immediately.

Frank's RedHot. Way too thin.

If you put this directly on your sandwich, again,

you're gonna have a very drippy situation,

which some people like, I don't.

I would sprinkle this on after the fact

if your chicken sandwich was too dry and flavorless.

Hopefully, we won't need that.

Then, onto the question of mayo.

I love mayo on a fried chicken sandwich.

It's kind of part and parcel

with almost every fried chicken sandwich.

Mayo is adding fat to the situation, creaminess.

It's just great sort of accompaniment

to the crunch and the spice.

Hellmann's, totally acceptable.

Egg yolks, oil, mustard, and spices.

That's what it tastes like.

Solid.

The same cannot be said for Sir Kensington's.

Oh, oh, ugh.

Oh, my God, that's so [beep] gross.

There's a fishy element to it.

There's a basement must going on.

This would detract from whatever you put it on.

I definitely want mayo on my sandwich,

but I think I'm gonna make my own

because that's gonna make something

head and shoulders above anything you can get at the store.

Mayonnaise made from raw eggs.

The sort of general rule of thumb that I like to use

is to hit the egg with the same amount of force

that it would receive

if you were to drop it from about here.

What is it, about 36 inches?

Three feet, roughly?

Whopp, you lose a little bit, but...

I got a shell in there.

Don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm talking about.

And when you drop it like that,

you're getting a little splatter.

If you just hit it with that amount of force,

you're gonna get a nice clean crack.

Now, we're gonna add half a clove of garlic.

The juice of half a lemon, probably gonna do that much.

Some sugar, need a little bit of salt in there,

and Dijon mustard.

An essential part of this recipe

is that you need a blender cup

that's this virtually the same width

as the head of the immersion blender.

You want there to be very, very little play

on the sides of the container.

That's how you're gonna create this little vortex in there

that emulsifies together the oil and the egg

and creates a thick, creamy mayonnaise.

So first, we're gonna blitz this a little bit

just to liquefy the garlic and beat up the eggs perfect.

And slowly, carefully pour two cups of oil.

This is in neutral-flavored vegetable canola.

If you overprocess olive oil, it can become bitter.

So you don't want to use olive oil.

It's also just too flavorful.

And so we're gonna start by processing at the bottom

and then we're gonna sort of slowly pulse our way up.

[blender whirring]

Now, this is homemade mayonnaise.

Hmm.

It's the only mayonnaise that I would eat

on its own like that.

Here's the mayo I'm using for my fried chicken sandwich.

Next up, toppings.

[gentle upbeat music]

Somebody had a gong?

Does a spicy fried chicken sandwich need toppings?

Not necessarily.

We don't want it to add any sort of slipperiness

or structural instability.

Anything that we're gonna add

should make the sandwich greater than the sum of its parts,

not safeguard against its shortcomings.

First up, we have lettuce.

I don't know why we put lettuce on sandwiches.

It adds a little pop of color, really not much flavor.

[lettuce crunching]

I don't think it's necessary.

Cabbage, the precursor to slaw.

Certainly not gonna put

just whole slabs of cabbage on there.

What are we, out of our minds?

Shredded and mixed together

with a little bit of mayo and some spices,

this can be a wonderful accompaniment

to a spicy fried chicken sandwich

because it's gonna add some tang

and sort of cool things off,

and that would be nice,

but it's kind of overcomplicating things.

I'm not sure I would want it on my perfect sandwich.

I'm gonna stay away from tomatoes.

They tend to be pretty slippery

and I also feel like they're a crutch.

I feel like this is something you lean on if you're like,

Eh, I'm just putting cold cuts on this bread.

I need something on there.

Avocado. Another crutch, I think, on sandwiches.

This is something that's going to add a bit of moisture,

some softness, a lot of fat,

and designate the sandwich California-style.

Virtually every fried chicken sandwich

is enhanced with pickles.

If you don't want pickles on your sandwich,

that is your right,

but they are a wonderful accompaniment to fried chicken,

especially spicy fried chicken,

because they're a hit of acid,

they're a little bit more crunched.

They just play really nice with all the flavors,

particularly bread and butter.

Sweet pickles, these have a lot of sugar in them,

so they're gonna add a nice sort of layer of sweetness

to the whole affair.

So that's why I'm definitely gonna go pickles.

Jalapeno peppers, wholly unnecessary.

All the heat that we need

is gonna be coming from the spice mixture

that we're gonna brush on the chicken after the fact.

All in all, it's super classic to put just pickles and mayo

on a fried chicken sandwich and nothing else.

And that's pretty much the direction that I'm headed.

Here's the only topping I'm using

for my fried chicken sandwich.

So now, it's time to deep fry, but with what?

[gentle upbeat music]

Oil.

So we're deep frying because that is the way

to get things the crispiest on this planet.

Direct contact with oil is what makes them crisp.

This is an opportunity to add a little bit of flavor,

not too much.

So first up, we have unrefined coconut oil.

This is a wholly inappropriate option for deep frying.

First off, because unrefined coconut oil

has a smoke point around 280 degrees Fahrenheit,

we're gonna be exceeding that by nearly 100 degrees.

So you're gonna end up

with a big smoking pot of accurate oil.

That's not the direction we want to go in.

Next step, peanut oil.

This is my favorite way to go.

I feel like foods fry up a little browner,

a little crispier, and there's no distinct peanut flavor,

but it does impart just a richer, bitter flavor.

It's just the best frying oil,

unless, of course, you have a deathly peanut allergy.

Next up, we have lard.

And especially for Nashville hot chicken,

this is the fat of choice.

You can't do much better

for just pure, unctuous, rich, savory flavor.

I mean, you're deep frying in pork fat, pure pork fat.

It's amazing.

Next up, we have schmaltz.

I wouldn't deep fry this.

This is chicken fat dripping, so it is completely delicious.

But I'm guessing

if you heated this past 300 degrees Fahrenheit,

it would start smoking

'cause there's so much particulate in it.

I mean, look at it, you can't even see through it.

I believe the smoke point for extra virgin olive oil

is 410 degrees Fahrenheit,

so it's not gonna smoke on us.

It's got a very strong olive oil flavor

and it's gonna make your fried food taste like that, too.

Just not ideal for fried chicken.

And it's expensive.

How much was this, 25 bucks?

And this isn't even enough.

Then, we got pure vegetable oil.

This is a very fine option.

It is a little less flavorful than the peanut.

It doesn't brown quite as well as the peanut,

but it's an excellent deep frying oil.

This and canola, any neutral-flavored oil like those.

Today, I'm gonna do something a little wild.

I'm gonna do a mixture of peanut oil and lard.

So we can get a lot of that lard flavor

and still get the great frying properties of peanut oil

by combining the two.

So to deep fry a chicken, you don't need a deep fryer.

That's great if you have one,

but a dutch oven with a candy thermometer will do just fine.

I'm gonna start with the lard.

It's over 3,000 calories in this little tub.

To that lard, I'm going to add peanut oil.

So I'm gonna get some of the great characteristics of both.

The more oil you have,

the less it's gonna cool off when you add the chicken.

The target temperature

that we're shooting for in this pot is 375.

You wanna grab the chicken by its thinnest point

so you lose the least amount of breading.

You wanna gently drop it in and drop it away from you,

so if there's any splash, it's not coming at you.

I'm looking for a deep golden brown crust.

[chicken fizzling]

There we go, come on.

Oh, already.

Already looking crispy.

[chicken fizzling]

Oh, yeah, buddy, that's looking right.

Here we go. Gently in and away.

[chicken fizzling]

Yeah.

The spray that we shout off this thing,

it's like a SeaWorld.

And so what we have here are double-breaded,

ultra-crispy chicken breasts,

golden brown ready for the spice element.

One decision that I'm firm on

is I want this to be really spicy,

and I think there's no better way to do that

than Nashville hot chicken style.

The only real difference

between fried chicken and Nashville hot chicken

is after it's been cooked,

it's brushed with a hot fat spice mixture.

So that's what we're gonna do right now.

We're starting with light brown sugar.

Paprika, this looks like it's the smoked variety,

which is gonna be interesting.

Garlic powder, cayenne pepper.

This stuff is hot.

We have this nice spice and sugar mixture, mostly spice.

Now, the fun part, we're going to ladle

some of our wonderful lard and oil mixture,

which is still super duper hot, right over top.

Got that going, let's whisk that together.

[Andrew chuckles]

The hot oil not only toast the spices.

I believe if it's hot,

less of it's going to be absorbed into the crust.

I think it's gonna help the crust stay crisp, I think.

Let's make this chicken angry.

Just brush that hot fat spice mixture right over top.

Look how angry that looks.

Oh, my.

This is the kind of chicken that makes you panic sweat.

Like, Oh, [beep], I made a mistake.

All right, chicken's ready for my chicken sandwich.

All right, we got all of our pieces,

now let's put them together.

[gentle upbeat music]

First, bun, duh.

Grab our crispy chicken.

Nice. I like that it's overlap.

Honestly, I like that.

I'm gonna hit this guy, the mayo.

Don't be shy.

Throw some pickles down on the chicken itself

just because that's what I'm gonna do.

Come here, crazy diamond.

My spicy fried chicken sandwich.

It's like theatrical, it's dramatic.

I wanna get a little of everything,

but first I have to eat through this nubbin.

[bright music]

Hmm.

Mm.

It is flavorful, it is tender, it is spicy.

It is crispy on the outside.

The mayo brings a nice sort of like creamy balance to it.

Pickles are nice.

The brioche, I take it back, that was great.

It's rich, it's buttery, it's sweet,

and it's such a nice counterpart.

Wow. I'm pro-brioche

when it comes to spicy chicken sandwiches.

Here I am eating my words literally.

Everybody's working together nicely here, even the bun,

which I was incredulous about at best.

This is symphonic.

We definitely have some cooking lessons

to take away from this,

but my biggest one is flexibility.

You need to be able to work with what you got.

You need to be able to pivot

so that if things don't go quite your way,

it still turns out awesome.

These are my decisions.

This is how I make my spicy fried chicken sandwich.

How do you make yours?

That's up to you.

[gentle upbeat music]

Come here.

Oh, this is the most embarrassing thing

in my professional career.

[Crew] I'll make sure we cut all this out.

No, leave it in.

[Crew] Rolling. Leave it in.