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Bon Appétit
How NYC’s Best Fried Chicken Sandwich is Made | Made to Order | Bon Appétit
How NYC’s Best Fried Chicken Sandwich is Made | Made to Order | Bon Appétit
Bon Appétit
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9:30 · Feb 17, 2026
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Hi,
I'm
Eric
Hong.
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0:04
Hi, I'm Eric Hong.
0:05
I'm the chef of Pecking House here in Chinatown.
0:07
And today we're going to make my perfect fried chicken sandwich.
0:13
I started working in Michelin starred restaurants in 2010.
0:15
After a long, somewhat illustrious career in fine dining, I make fried chicken now.
0:20
A perfect fried chicken sandwich has
0:22
hot crispy juicy chicken,
0:25
nice soft bread, QPY mayonnaise,
0:27
chili oil, and bread and butter pickles.
0:30
Let's make a fried chicken sandwich.
0:32
Let's make a fried chicken sandwich.
0:33
I like the knife hand.
0:34
It feels more strong and confident.
0:40
When making a fried chicken sandwich,
0:42
I think thighs or
0:44
breast meat are the way to go.
0:46
We use thighs because I think it has a lot better of a texture.
0:49
I'm going to look through these chicken thighs.
0:50
I'm cool with all these little extra bits here.
0:52
They just going to be more interesting fried textures later.
0:55
Obviously, Western culture kind of puts a preference on white meat. We're in Chinatown.
0:59
Chinese people love dark meat.
1:01
If you cook dark meat past 185,
1:03
that is the temperature after which collagen, gelatin, all those things break down.
1:06
It's going to be really tender.
1:07
The buttermilk marinade is going to increase that perception.
1:11
Cartilage is never going to cook down.
1:12
We want to remove it for like a boneless eating experience in a sandwich.
1:15
Here's a little bit of something here.
1:17
I'll cut that out.
1:18
Just a little piece.
1:19
So, when you're poking through the grocery store aisle for chicken thighs, look for
1:22
ones that are big and uniform and you'll be able to make a really nice chicken sandwich.
1:26
All right, let's buttermilk our chicken here.
1:30
So, we're going to obviously start off with some buttermilk.
1:32
This is kind of a weak acid
1:33
and that helps with improving the texture of what we're marinating and it's going
1:36
to add a little bit of fat and serve as sort of a binder
1:39
for the other things we're adding.
1:40
We call it the marinade step, but it's actually combining a lot of steps.
1:42
We're marinating, we're seasoning,
1:44
and we're brining all at the same time.
1:47
Brining basically means that you're adding salt to your product and that will help
1:51
it retain moisture and water.
1:53
This is our seasoning mix.
1:55
This is a blend of salt, sugar, and MSG.
1:57
Three parts salt, one part MSG, one part sugar.
2:00
That for us is the perfect balance to bring moisture retention, savoriness,
2:03
and just like a hint of sweetness to balance the salt out.
2:06
And whenever you're seasoning meat, you're using more than you think because meat just
2:09
really takes a lot of salt to get seasoned all the way through.
2:12
And obviously MSG, I've been on my soap box here many times talking about
2:15
MSG and why it has been wrongly maligned throughout history.
2:18
Anyone trying to tell you that MSG in crystalline form is different from
2:22
MSG in tomatoes is
2:25
fear-mongering and giving you bad science.
2:28
And now I'm going to add some Dijon mustard here.
2:30
You can use any kind of mustard.
2:31
I just like Dijon.
2:32
When you cook mustard,
2:33
the pungency dies down a lot.
2:34
A lot of soph compounds dissipate.
2:37
So really what it adds is all the savory mellow notes that are behind the spiciness.
2:41
I'm going to add garlic powder.
2:43
Huge prevalent ingredient in southern fried chicken.
2:46
Onion powder as well.
2:47
I'm going to add my five spice powder.
2:49
Five spice is primarily the anis flavor from the star anis pods.
2:52
Such a prevalent flavor in all Chinese cooking.
2:54
And then this is kind of our secret little trick. We add flour.
2:57
So the flour is going to absorb the moisture from the buttermilk
3:01
and the chicken overnight.
3:03
That's going to cause the starch granules to swell with water and that's what
3:06
gives gluten its strength.
3:07
And giving the hydration,
3:09
giving the gluten some strength is going to improve the crust later.
3:12
We're going to marinade this at least for 12 hours.
3:15
24 is probably ideal.
3:21
Chicken has been marinating.
3:22
We're going to dredge it.
3:24
Our dredge is a mix of flour, potato starch, cornstarch.
3:27
Marries a lot of crunchy and crispy textures.
3:29
Cornstarch, potato starch definitely on the crispy side.
3:32
flour more on the crunchy side.
3:33
So, I think this is right in the middle.
3:34
We're going to let it sit in the dredge for a little bit because
3:37
it's a thigh and there's a lot of uneven surfaces.
3:40
As you see, there's a lot of craggly textures to be over here.
3:43
If you don't literally press the flour into it, it won't stick to shake
3:47
it off a little bit.
3:48
Then, we use EverCris, a modified starch.
3:50
It's uh basically benafiber modified wheat dextrin.
3:53
We use about 10%
3:54
by weight of the dredge.
3:55
What that does is slows the movement of water.
3:58
So, it traps water
3:59
and that makes for
4:01
some super crispy chicken.
4:02
I think the biggest mistakes that home cooks make is they don't
4:05
get the dredge timing quite right.
4:07
They either go too quickly
4:09
and it's not coated evenly and then they get this like patchy
4:13
fried chicken where the crust kind of falls apart
4:15
or they let it sit too long
4:17
and it overhydrates and it becomes like a really thick shell that doesn't have
4:20
like a lot of nice crispy textures to it.
4:22
It's kind of right in the middle and it's kind of a visual cue.
4:25
You can kind of see it where there's all these little small bits.
4:28
So I as a time reference use for about a minute or two to
4:32
sit in the dredge making sure it's really evenly coated and then go into the oil.
4:37
Gently lay it in there.
4:39
Probably don't have one of these in your home.
4:41
I don't blame you.
4:42
Deep fryers are dangerous, messy.
4:44
I recommend pan frying at home.
4:45
I'm frying at 325° F.
4:47
That's kind of the Goldilock zone where the starches and the protein are going
4:50
to brown and the water is still going to evaporate.
4:53
If you go too cool with your oil,
4:55
you're not creating enough steam.
4:57
The steam that's escaping the chicken
4:59
is repelling the oil, which is going to prevent your crust from being too greasy.
5:03
If it's too hot, obviously, it's going to burn.
5:05
Uh, and it's too dark. That's unpleasant.
5:07
So, 325F is kind of the golden zone.
5:09
This is going to be frying for about eight minutes, but that's just a guideline.
5:12
For true precision, use a thermometer.
5:14
The temperature for cooking chicken is 165F.
5:17
For dark meat, for getting the right texture where it's tender,
5:21
it's not bouncy and it eats well like in a sandwich, you need to
5:24
get past 185F, past the point where gelatin and collagen will break down.
5:28
We're also going to be double frying.
5:29
So, this is the first fry where we want to get the protein to
5:31
the temperature we want.
5:32
So, above 185 F. Resting.
5:34
The most important thing we're trying to achieve is just bringing down the temperature
5:37
of the protein, letting the moisture redistribute.
5:40
When we fry it the second time, we're really just bringing the crust back
5:43
to where we want it. Hot, shatteringly crisp.
5:45
That's kind of the whole purpose behind resting it.
5:47
This looks nice and rested.
5:49
This is still quite hot.
5:50
So, for our second fry,
5:52
we're going to do about a minute to make the crust really, really, really crispy.
5:56
Obviously, fried chicken needs to be
5:59
somewhere on the spectrum of crispy crunchy.
6:01
Crispy is the front of your teeth.
6:03
Crunchy is the back of your teeth.
6:04
We try to go right in the middle, maybe a little bit more on the crispy side. All right.
6:08
chicken fried for the second time.
6:11
This is our chili oil.
6:12
Pecking house is chili oil.
6:13
This is what makes pecking house pecking house.
6:14
It looks very simple, but there is a lot of love and technique in here.
6:17
We toast our own chilies,
6:19
toast our own Sichuan peppercorns.
6:20
We grind them ourselves.
6:22
We use tenon chilis.
6:23
They're like a medium heat.
6:24
We add sugar, salt, MSG, vinegar powder.
6:27
We bring acidity to it.
6:29
And then we make an herbed duck fat.
6:30
Duck fat basically improves anything that's fried.
6:33
Also, high quality Sichuan peppercorns.
6:35
The redder they are, the better they are.
6:37
the more citrus aromomas they'll have and the more tingly they'll be.
6:40
And then we're gonna dunk it.
6:42
I used to delicately
6:43
uh paint this on.
6:46
But we got too busy.
6:47
So, we started just dunking chicken in.
6:49
You want to do this when the chicken is hot and the chili oil
6:52
is room temperature cuz then they're going to kind of repel one another.
6:55
It's going to drain ever so slightly. Look at it.
6:58
Look at this thing.
6:58
It's gorgeous, isn't it?
7:00
So, we didn't trim it up too much.
7:01
So, you see there's all these little crispy textures.
7:04
That's going to come through really beautifully when we put this on a brios bun.
7:07
We're going to let it drain
7:08
while we build the rest of our sandwich.
7:14
I'm going to toast this bread up.
7:15
We're using a bio bun.
7:17
You can use butter.
7:18
I like using mayo because this is makes for a really even crust.
7:21
And basically what's going to happen here
7:23
is the mayonnaise is going to break into oil and egg and brown really beautiful.
7:28
Brios has a ton of butter already, so I don't think we need more butter.
7:31
Toasting creates a lot of mayard reactions.
7:33
The browning, caramelized notes kind of bring out the sweetness in bread and also
7:37
heating up bread, especially brios changes it.
7:39
It makes it a little more chewy
7:41
feeling when you're eating it.
7:43
I really like pressing bread while it's toasting on a griddle.
7:46
If you are making a singular perfect sandwich as we are today,
7:49
then I highly recommend this step.
7:50
All right, so we have all the things.
7:52
We have our beautifully toasted bio.
7:54
We have our Qy mayonnaise,
7:56
different from normal mayonnaise.
7:58
As you can see here, it has a very dense texture, almost like a
8:00
shiny appearance to it, and it stands very firm and smooth in this way.
8:05
Having tasted these side by side with
8:07
kind of more pedestrian
8:08
mayonnaise, if you will, I think the QB makes a big difference.
8:10
Bread and butter pickles,
8:11
crinkle cut, a little bit sweet, definitely a little bit tangy.
8:14
And then, of course, we have
8:16
the fried chicken thigh dipped in chili oil.
8:19
And then, as I was saying,
8:21
you have to give it a delicate little smoosh.
8:23
Just a little bit.
8:24
You don't want to smash the bread.
8:25
I don't know how to say smoosh in Spanish though, so I think my
8:28
staff think I'm crazy. Look at that. Glorious.
8:30
Look at all those textures.
8:32
Looks like a food style ad except it's completely edible and delicious.
8:36
You know, I really love that we didn't trim this up too much and
8:38
we weren't too precious about making it a very specific uniform shape.
8:42
You know, it's not like a burger or anything.
8:44
It's got all these kind of craggly textural bits.
8:46
I think that's the stuff that makes it really
8:52
That's pretty good, man.
8:53
Look at that structural integrity.
8:55
Took a singular bite out of it and nothing moved.
8:58
It's checking all the boxes. Structural integrity.
9:01
Crispy, seasoned, juicy, hot.
9:04
It's got the nice texture of the pillowy bread against the crispy meaty chicken.
9:08
A little bit of pop of zing and crunch from the pickles, creamy mayo. It's good, man.
9:13
It's really, really good. Chicken sandwiches.
9:15
There's a reason they're so popular.
9:16
They just hit all the things in your brain in your in your silly
9:19
little caveman reptile brain.
9:21
This lights all the things up. Makes you happy.
9:23
You need a little bit of that cuz it's dark out there, you know.
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