A hot chicken sandwich recipe to embrace the burn, or make a meatless mushroom variation
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Caesar salad was invented in Mexico, cheesecake in Greece, and fried green tomatoes probably originated in the Midwestern United States. I find the history of recipes exciting — making something from another culture or era can be a way of traveling to another place, or back in time.
Though the origins of many now-common dishes are muddled in mystery, hot chicken’s history, a spicy tale of love and revenge, is alive and well.
I wrote about it this week after experiencing the heat while visiting Los Angeles recently. No, hot chicken didn’t originate in Los Angeles. Nashville’s Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack was the first place to sell the dish. There, the most popular order is bone-in chicken quarters, fried to a crisp and doused in red, fiery spice. But a few years ago, a member of the family, Kim Prince, opened Hotville in L.A.’s Baldwin Hills neighborhood. She makes the same recipe her great-great uncle started selling in the 1930s. You can order bone-in pieces, which are served with slices of white bread and pickles; fish, which is fried and covered in the same blend of spices; or hot chicken sandwiches.
After I took my first bite of a hot chicken sandwich at Hotville, in the key of Music City Medium, I thought I was going to be all right. The heat is warming at first, like a glowing ember, cozy and soft. So I took another bite. But as you chew and swallow, the fireworks start to pop. I put the sandwich down and reeled in my chair. My hubris couldn’t handle the heat.
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As I was wiping sweat from my forehead, another patron passed my table. “Hope you put your toilet paper in the freezer!” he said with a smirk. (I only really understood that comment about 16 hours later!)
At Hotville, when patrons can’t handle the heat, they’re offered ranch dressing (the dairy helps cut the heat), extra pickles (the acidity cools the tongue) and honey. “My daddy, Martin Prince, drizzles honey on everything,” Kim Prince says.
I squeezed two packets of honey on the chicken in front of me and took another bite. It hurt so good.
Honey indeed helps offset the heat, and helped inspire this recipe for hot chicken (or mushroom) sandwiches. It’s not the Prince family recipe — it might not even come close — but it does deliver a peppery punch to the gut, whether you eat meat or not.
I want to be clear: This recipe is nothing more than an homage to Prince’s. Everyone who enjoys lots of spice should try the chicken at Prince’s or Hotville. But if you can’t make it there, or you don’t enjoy food with lots of heat, this recipe will give you a manageable taste of the classic. It calls for hot sauce in the brine, cayenne in the batter and chile flakes in the hot honey. Omit some or all of that spice to suit your tastes. Then, serve it with a crunchy buttermilk slaw and lots and lots of pickles.
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