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Chick-Fil-A sandwiches at home from Serious Eats. Story here. My culinary brother-in-law and I decided to give these a try. We followed their instructions pretty closely though I slipped a 1/4 teaspoon of Amesphos into the brine. We let them brine overnight, they got a good 12 hours plus in the fridge. We cut the breasts down per Kenji's instructions.

We used an enameled cast iron pot to deep fry. That worked well, as well as the processed coconut oil we used since it was the only oil in the house at the time. Deep fried at 350F for the specified 4 minutes. Eek! The chicken was fine, the breading was burnt. Dark brown and a bitter taste to it. Not totally gone, but not what I'd want to serve. For the breading, 2 to 2 1/2 minutes seemed to be the target. However, when I checked a breast at 3 minutes, but it was still not quite done. Hard to balance the breading and the meat.

The chicken's texture, I am happy to report, was nicely moist, had the gelatinous, non-stringy structure that Kenji talks about in his write up on this. So we tried deep frying the chicken tenders without breading, then we cut one of the breaded breasts in half, deep fried both for about 2:45 minutes. Nice, the chicken tender was cooked through and still moist. The breaded breast was good, though thin, and the crust was much more edible. Then the brother-in-law used his knife skills to butterfly the breasts so they will cook faster and we re-breaded them for complete coverage. The target this time is all done at the 2:30 minute mark. This is what I'll serve the family when they come home from town.

Overall, a winner. I wish I could produce these with the thicker piece of chicken breast, cooked through and nicely breaded without the crust being overdone. I love the flavor, I love the moisture of the chicken breast when brined and cooked this way. I wonder if we sous vide unbreaded breasts ahead of time so they were cooked pretty well through and then stored them. When it was time to make chicken sandwiches, it would be time to bread and deep fry for 2 1/2 minutes so the breast is finished and the crust is at its best. Anyone played with this before? Does this sound feasible?

Sorry - no photos this time.

I think you could definitely SV them beforehand and then deep fry for the breading. You might want to have them really chilled before breading to help retard additional cooking. I'd also stick with the brine to help keep them firm so the chicken isn't too soft.

I may try this in a couple of days, I have a few more breasts in the freezer, I just need to brine them. Maybe sous vide at 130F? Question about cooking them in the brine possibly? I may try one like that just for feasibility. Pour the brine and the breast into a ziploc bag, 130F and let it go for whatever the time requirement is but adjusted for the brine to come to temp. I've run out of smaller sous vide bags. Either way, if I can get a thicker breast so it is up to temp and safe while the breading is crispy but not going dark on me, this will be a serious winner.

The brine is very simple and I put a small amount of Amesphos in the brine to help with water retention. The science gene says do the next without it, but the little devil is say, why change what works! It was way under the allowable amount according to the manufacturer but I've never put out a moister breast. I can see why Chick-Fil-A sells a lot of these.

*my* inclination would be to take the breasts much closer to final temp, bread them cold, and hit the breading at a fairly high temp to go quickly and just warm the chicken through and not count on additional cooking in the oil. This way you will be largely immune to differences in thickness, etc.

If there was a concern for the breading being done at high temp, you could back down the temp and go longer, but indeed I think you'll want to 'undercook' (but in the safe zone) the chicken and let it cook further a little in the oil.

I expect there are a lot of ways to skin this cat.

Thanks Paul, I will give your idea a go. Do them closer to finish, 155F or so. The 130F number was just off the top of my head and it was basically from the idea of partially cooking it. I'll cool them down some before breading and then finish. I really look forward to working this one out. The flavor is excellent, a tasty balance, and when I can control the finish of the breading, these will be serious little taste treats.

In the comments section of the Serious Eats article, there is a discussion of using pickle juice as the brine. Apparently Chick-Fil-A used to do this a few decades back before they became larger. Something I had never thought of and if I ever get to pickling, a great use of the left over brine, eh?

Steve,

You might also search your cookbooks and the web for schnitzel recipes. A Chick-fil-A is basically a chicken schnitzel sandwich.

I'm hunting through them. Some nice ideas in the schnitzel arena. I was impressed with the Kenji-Alt coating where you add a bit of the milk/egg mix to the flour and it balls up for a thicker, crunchier breading. But T. Keller talks about using Panko which sounds pretty good too.

KFC had a "double down" sandwich that these would work for as well. Some smoked bacon slices, a couple of tangy homemade "melty cheese slices" sandwiched between two "schnitzel" chicken breasts would be nice! I received a bit of Tepin chili powder, kind of hot but in a different way than cayenne, so spicy schnitzel might be on the menu tonight!

Well, try number 2 is in the bag. It turned out pretty well. I liked it, though the crust is still a bit dark. We did whole breasts, sous vide at 155F for 30 minutes. We cooled them down per Paul's suggestion and breaded them. I really like the breading. It tends to stick, which is nice, and is tasty. The sandwich ended up a nice thick breast, fully cooked and warmed all the way through. That was with a 2:30 minute cook. The breading is still a bit dark as shown in the slideshow.

My wife doesn't like the sandwich with larger breasts (no comments heh heh) and wants us to go for more of Fuzzy's schnitzel approach. Which we will do next time. Between sous vide and thinner schnitzel style, I think we can take the deep fry time down to 2:00 minutes and have a lighter color when finished while still having the nice warm sandwich.

The smoked bacon was a bit overdone, maybe the honey coating on it, I'm guessing. The cheese is from Serious Eats melty cheese slice recipe that my wife now demands be done at least once a month. She really loves them on burgers, egg sandwiches, and even will grab one and start munching as a snack.

For the whole process from my ghetto sous vide setup to the sandwich, here is the slideshow (12 images)

BEAUTIFUL! Nice to see some of my ol' chem lab stuff in action

Steve,

What's your altitude? I find I need to reduce deep frying temps due to altitude.

Amy