Hot Chicken

Fried chicken? Check. Heat? Check. Pickle slices? Check. Sliced white bread? Check. Hot Chicken is in the house! A little over a year ago, on a sweltering July day in Nashville we made the pilgrimage to Prince's Hot Chicken. Having lunch in the heat of the day at a hole-in-the-wall joint with no AC, eating piping hot chicken straight out of the fryer, coated with burn-your-face-off fiery spices seems crazy. And it was crazy - crazy good! Here in San Diego, our heat wave continues and the conditions seemed right for attempting Hot Chicken at home. But how to make it? We decided that Justin Jones' contest-winning recipe from the 2008 Music City Hot Chicken Festival was a good place to start. His recipe is pretty simple - a paste predominantly of cayenne and lard that is applied to the chicken after frying. Adding the heat post-frying seems like the right thing to do logistically (keeping the spice out of the cooking oil and allowing different heat levels of paste to be used at the end to customize the hotness of the order on a piece-by-piece basis) and it rings true with anecdotes I've read about the method used at Prince's. It all starts, however, with good fried chicken: We do an overnight buttermilk soak, then dredge in seasoned flour and fry until crisp. Fried chicken was one of Sherry's favorites growing up. Her chicken-frying skills have atrophied over the years, but they are starting to get back in form. The heat comes from the chile paste. This is what it looks like when you first mix it up: After 10 seconds in the microwave on high, the lard loosens up nicely and it can be easily brushed onto the chicken. How to serve it? That's pretty much established tradition - over a couple of slices of white bread, with several pickle slices skewered to the chicken with a toothpick. I will note, however, that these pickles were homemade - hence the lack of the characteristic fluorescent-green color. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying fluorescent-green is bad in a pickle, we just haven't been able to achieve it yet... Once everything is properly assembled, it's time to chow down. Biting into the chicken, the crust crunches nicely, its temperature and spice level challenging with their aggressiveness. The meat inside is savory and juicy, just as fried chicken should be, and temporarily diminishes the burn. But only temporarily - the burn is not to be denied, and builds with each bite. Until you're done, left only with bones and the remaining chile-stained bits of bread. Now for the critique: Was it good? Absolutely. Very good indeed. Some of the best fried chicken I've had. How did it stand up to Prince's Hot Chicken? We've got a ways to go. First, the chicken we had there was extremely well cooked. Ours is good, and getting better, but not yet in the same league. That's on us, though, and not the recipe we used. Ok, how about the Hot Chicken recipe? I think it works well, but I'm not sure that it is quite what Prince's actually does. First off, the color is too dark. Have a look at the "medium-spicy" leg quarter I had at Prince's: This was very hot - certainly hotter than the chicken that we made - but isn't very dark-colored at all (aside from the top of the drumstick, which is dark from cooking and not chile). Similarly, the oil on the bread was much more light-orange rather than the deep red we got. Another factor is the bitterness of the cayenne. I really like the complexity you get from powdered dried chile, but in large quantities on its own, you really taste and smell the bitterness. In summary: We definitely think that application of the "hot" after frying is the way to go. Exact composition of the "hot" merits further experimentation. Stay tuned!