Diet & Food

Skip the Pricey Take-out & Make Kardea Brown's Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwiches at Home

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Frying food at home gets a bad rap. People think it can be messy, or dangerous, but the truth is that once you master the art of frying food at home (and buy a splatter screen), a delicious new world opens up. Suddenly, rather than spending all of your time waiting for delivery or standing in line to order your favorite foods at a trendy restaurant or food truck, you can just make the dish you’re craving in the comfort of your own kitchen. Take Nashville hot chicken. It seems like a new hot chicken joint opens up every other weekend, but the lines and wait times at these trendy chicken spots are always longer than we have patience for. Luckily, the Food Network’s Kardea Brown knows just how we feel, so she figured out how to make perfect Nashville hot fried chicken at home.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bZiyqfyMmVc%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Brown is the host of Delicious Miss Brown, and is also the author of The Way Home: A Celebration of Sea Islands Food. Her recipes are full of flavor, and this is definitely no exception.

Courtesy of Amistad.

To start, Brown seasons her chicken (skin-on, boneless chicken breasts) with her “house seasoning,” a blend of spices, salt and pepper.

She dredges the chicken in flour, then seasoned buttermilk, then flour again. Then, she lets the breaded chicken sit on a wire rack before frying. This allows the flour to absorb the moisture from the buttermilk, which ends up resulting in a crispier exterior coating.

Courtesy of Mueller.

Once it’s fried, the chicken is dunked in a sweet and spicy hot butter sauce. No drizzling or spreading here — only a full dunk will do when it comes to coating every nook and cranny of the juicy fried chicken with flavor.

A crunchy, tangy red cabbage and shredded carrot slaw goes on top, adding a much-needed hit of freshness to the sandwich, the perfect contrast to the spicy sauce and crispy breading on the chicken. It’s just as good as take-out, if not better, and best of all, you can customize the recipe as much as you’d like to create the Nashville hot chicken sandwich of your dreams.

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