Nashville hot chicken recipe

• Kitchen Items
• Mixing bowl
• Saucepan (for frying)
• Basting brush or mixing spatula
• Hot chicken paste
• 1 Tbsp + 2 tsp lard or shortening
• 3 Tbsp cayenne
• 3 pinches sugar
• 3/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• Fried chicken
• Self rising flour
• Chicken breast
• Frying oil of choice
• Hot chicken sandwich
• White bread
• Pickles
• Begin by washing the chicken. Then dredge it through the self rising flour, covering thoroughly. Heat oil until flour sizzles. Fry chicken until golden brown. Mix all ingredients for paste, microwaving the lard to make it easier to mix. To make sandwich, coat chicken on both sides with paste. Place on bread and cover with pickles.

Nashville hot chicken recipe source (link)

Damn look over there...what a hot piece of chicken

Not too much discussion needed before this week's food. Fried chicken seems to be a staple in almost all diets and the paste has the same number of ingredients as I have fingers. The best part is, this recipe is very easy to make changes to. You can use a different part of the chicken (I went with chicken breast because, unlike Kim Kardashian, I'm not a big fan of bones). You can vary the heat of the paste (was that a pop culture reference I just made?). You can even add different ingredients/flavors to the paste or the chicken (I think that was a pop culture reference. Look at me, expanding my horizons and such). I'm presenting what I did, but don't let me stifle your creativity in creating this dish. 

Lettuce begin (I got puns too). Start with the ingredients below. 

Nashville hot chicken ingredients

One order of Nashville hot chicken, hold the Nasvhille and the hot

After washing the chicken (no Salmonella please!), dredge it through self rising flour until it's got a nice thick winter coat. No need to brush it in egg or any other sticky agent typically used in frying, the chicken is wet enough on its own to hold on to the flour (plus you just washed it). Heat your oil of choice until it sizzles, and then fry the chicken until it's golden-brown or looks like below.

Damn that looks good

The timing of when you make the paste doesn't matter, but I made mine after I cooked the chicken. Start by microwaving your lard or shortening for 20-30 seconds. I wish I could provide a legitimate reason as to why I used shortening instead of lard, but frankly it was because I couldn't find lard at the store when I went shopping (don't you love the deep, personal insight I always provide my loyal readers??). Anyways, mix the melted lard/shortening with the remaining paste ingredients until it looks like the bowl of molten lava below. With paste and chicken done, it's time to make a sammich. 

Sorta looks like milk. Lumpy milk, but still milk

Let's call this what it felt like later in the night...molten lava

But first, a quick aside that I promise you has a point.

When I was in 4th or 5th grade, I had to write a How-To essay on making a PB&J sandwich. The catch? It had to be TWO PAGES LONG! Now I'm not going to say I was the master wordsmith then that I am now, but how in the hell I was supposed to take something so simple to make that it's name is the recipe and turn that it into two pages of literary gold, I had no idea. So I went with the strategy that I felt every kid with a decent sense of sarcasm at that age would have used: I wrote it with the tone of a complete and utter smart-ass. I kid you not, I had whole paragraphs on these titillating topics (damn now I'm dropping alliteration on you): 

• Plate selection (The paper vs. ceramic debate: How the underlying cleanup issues affect the enjoyment of the final PB&J product)
• Knife selection (Butter, Dinner, or Steak: A look at the spreading scores of these household favorites)
• Proper procedure for the opening, and subsequent closing, of jars
• Storage techniques that will protect those that come after you

Once all of that was said and done, I think I spent about two sentences on actually making and eating the damn thing. The point of all of this being, the Nashville hot chicken sandwich is not difficult to make, nor am I going to try and make it difficult (I told you I had a reason for the PB&J story). You put the chicken on bread, coat one side in paste, flip the chicken, and coat the other side. Put some pickles on it if you want to, and you are done. No need for two pages here, just a simple description (thanks elementary school).

Aren't you glad I didn't take two pages to explain this?

At this point, you are done. The sandwich is made. Go eat it and enjoy. I wanted to include the following picture because everything I read said that if you have an orange grease stain on your bread, you've done right. Looks like I win.

Another picture that would piss off Peyton Manning, but I'm sure even he could appreciate that grease stain

In all seriousness though, the sandwich was delicious. Spicy yes, but nothing I couldn't handle. It was also easy to make, and as I mentioned earlier, easy to alter if you want a little less spice (or more) or wanted to change up the chicken. I've read that this paste/flavor also goes really well on fried seafood (catfish, shrimp) and after tasting it, I am intrigued to try it with something other than chicken. An interesting experience and one that brings us to 6/6.

The real Krabby Patty

Due to travel and general busy-ness, there has been a bit of a hiatus here at The Tripping Texan and for that, I am truly, madly, deeply sorry. There will be no primer for Baltimore (what we saw was sorta what I thought would happen), just a recap of the crab cakes...which starts now.

A decision I had to make this week, was whether to use real crab meat or imitation. Since I did not want to spend hours plucking expensive crab meat out of crab legs, I chose to go with imitation. I want to clear up something that I too had concerns about. Imitation crab meat is not "fake" crab meat. There is real crab meat mixed in, it's just not ALL crab meat. The type that I bought was crab mixed with Alaskan Pollock, which from what I can gather, is Alaska's version of catfish. So to make crabcakes, acquire through whatever means necessary the ingredients below (and butter), with the possibility of substituting real crab meat for the imitation.

Crab cake ingredients, minus the butter (he must have been late to the picture)

Let's begin. Start by melting the butter, and mix in the remaining ingredients except for the crab and the breadcrumbs. A crucial step that will make your life a whole lot easier than mine was is to mix these ingredients BEFORE adding the crab, not at the same time. I made it work, but that's because I'm awesome. Trust me though, you'll want to add the crab and crumbs after the other stuff is mixed together. Once you have that mixed, add the crab and bread crumbs, and continue to mix until it looks like this:

Crab cake mixture (that's a wooden spoon at the top of the picture, not some unmixed crab)

Now take a 1/2 cup measuring cup and use it like an ice cream scoop to scoop out the mixture, and mash it into a patty about 4-5 inches in diameter. Place these patties on a cornmeal covered pan, and put them in the fridge for at least an hour.

Ready for the fridge

When ready to cook, heat the vegetable oil until sprinkling cornmeal on it makes that telltale sizzle that you hear when frying food. Place the crab cakes in the oil and pray that they stay together better than mine did.

Sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle

Flip the crab cakes once, and when they've reached that beautiful golden brown color, they are done. (Sidenote: has cooking helped any other color gain more popularity than golden brown? Milk white? Cocoa brown? Orange orange?)

Finished crab "cakes" and proof that I do eat what I cook

While there's no photographic evidence, I was able to get the last couple of crab cakes to stay together while cooking. However, even though it doesn't look like a crab cake, it still tastes like one. I found the imitation crab meat to make no difference in the taste or flavor (neither did the other people who had some) and the recipe prepares plenty, so have no fear of running short (I actually froze about half of the cakes I had prepared before cooking). All in all, a great Baltimore taste that pushes us to 5/5 on the year.