How to Nashville Hot Chicken and Make Them Into Sliders

Nashville Hot Chicken has become a very popular dish over the last few years. It seems that restaurants and dishes on restaurant menus have reflected its popularity. Hot chicken pizza, hot chicken nuggets, hot chicken sandwiches, and hot chicken nachos are just a few of the examples of Nashville Hot Chicken taking America by storm. Hey, I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I like the dish, which is why I have decided to make some Nashville Hot Chicken sliders. My kids are big fans of sliders. I’m not sure if its because its a mini version of the things they already eat and think its cute, but they tend to eat sliders better than if I were to make a full sized sandwich. I am not going to try and understand children logic. If it works, it works, and I will run with it.

What is Nashville Hot Chicken? Basically, it is a piece of fried chicken, tossed in a sweet and spicy oil, served with pickles. So that’s what we are going to create today. The chicken we will be using two breasts. I broke down a couple chickens for a later recipe. I removed the tenders, and cut each breast into 4 pieces. First I cut each breast “hamburger”, or cut halfway between the rib and the outside of the breast to give me two, same sized cutlets. I then cut halfway between the top and the tip, perpendicular to the last cut. That gives me four, roughly equal sized pieces to make a chicken “patty” with. From there, I will be using the sous vide technique to cook these pieces. This is a completely optional step, though in my experience, this produces some of the best, perfectly cooked fried chicken. Just see my link below when I tried this technique for the first time. Its yummy, I swear.

Chicken and Waffles: The Best Fried Chicken Ever!

Properly set up your immersion circulator in a pot or container of water. Here is a link to the circulator that I am using: https://amzn.to/39OHgO4 Preheat the circulator to 155 F, this will ensure that the chicken is cooked perfectly after frying. In a vacuum seal bag, add your chicken, a tablespoon of salt, and a few grinds of fresh ground black pepper. **In hindsight, I would toss the chicken, salt and pepper in a bowl first to evenly distribute the seasonings. I didn’t do that this time and I ended up with a bunch of caked on pepper on two pieces of chicken. The salt was fine, it dissolved and distributed evenly.** After your seasoned chicken is in the bag, vacuum and seal. Now we are ready to cook. The chicken will need to be in the water for an hour to cook thoroughly.

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While your chicken is cooking, we will need to make our hot oil, breading flour, and set up our breading station. Lets get started on the flour. Combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix together thoroughly. Next, lets put together the hot oil. Combine together all of the ingredients and mix thoroughly, easy enough, huh? For the breading station you will need one bowl or container of you breading flower and one bowl or container of buttermilk. Lastly, set up and preheat your deep fryer to 350 F.

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After the chicken timer has gone off, pull the bag of chicken from the water. Remove the chicken from the bag. The chicken has cooked and will now be a single block. Gently pull apart the pieces and lay out on a paper towel. Now, its time to bread. Take a few pieces of the cooked chicken and completely coat them in your breading flour. Shake off any excess flour and submerge those pieces in your butter milk. Turn each piece over a few times to ensure that the chicken is coated completely in buttermilk. Remove the chicken from the buttermilk, shake off any excess butter milk, and go back into the breading flour. Turn the chicken over a few times to make sure it is fully coated. Again, shake off any excess flour, and its time to fry.

Gently, drop the chicken in the oil and allow to fry until it is golden brown and delicious. There is no need to worry about making sure the chicken is cooked through, the sous vide method has done that for us. While the chicken is browning, I toasted my slider buns. Spread a thin layer of butter on each face of the buns and toast over medium high heat. When the buns are done, and the chicken is golden brown, time to assemble. Remove the chicken from the fryer and put into a mixing bowl. Pour some of the hot oil over the chicken and gently toss to coat. Place the “oiled” chicken on the toasted bun, top with the other bun and skewer with a pickle on it. There you have it, Nashville Hot Chicken sliders. I served these with some homemade fries and a small bowl of pickles. A small side note, the kids didn’t like the hot chicken sauce, so they had basic fried chicken patties on buns. So, keep that in mind if you are cooking for children.

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Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions or comments, please, get in touch with me. As always, a like, a follow, and a share would be much appreciated. Until next time, cheers!