Sous Vide Nashville Hot Chicken

Nashville Hot Chicken is starting to become more and more available outside Tennessee, basically a highly spiced piece of fried chicken that after cooking is coated with a paste of cooking grease and hot spices.  While I've never had the chance to try it at the source we now have several places in Chicago that serve the dish.  Not too long ago I can across this article at Kentucky.com and decided I'd try to do my take on this regional specialty.

I made a spice blend based on the one in the article with a few minor changes based on what I had in the cabinet.  The blend I came up with is:

3 TB cayenne pepper
2 ts dry mustard
1 1/2 ts table salt
1 ts sugar
1 ts chipotle powder (didn't have any hot or smoked paprika)
1 ts black pepper
3/4 ts garlic powder
1/2 ts celery salt (mainly because I have a crap-ton of celery salt)

Because I had them I decided to use boneless/skinless chicken breasts.  I generously dusted all sides of the chicken with the spice mix before putting them in a gallon size Ziploc bag and letting them sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  The next day I filled a 12 quart cambro up to the 10 liter mark, attached the WiFi Nomiku and set the target temp to 150°f.  Once the bath was heated I put in the bag containing the seasoned chicken breasts and let them soak for 90 minutes.  When done the bag was removed from the bath and put in the refrigerator to chill.

Now it was time to play with the Paragon Induction Cooktop.  I figured I'd make some fries first to go with the chicken, I cut a russet potato in to batons and let them soak in cold water for about 10 minutes before rinsing several times.  About 6 cups of grease (corn oil with a little bacon grease) was put in a 3 quart sauce pan and the wireless probe put in place.  The potatoes were drained, patted dry with paper towels and put in the cold oil.  Finally the Paragon temperature was set to 370°f, rapid precision mode selected and the unit turned on.  Once the oil temp got over 212°f I switched to gentle precision mode and made sure to shake the pan every two minutes or so to keep things from sticking together.  This method worked pretty well, however as you can see in the picture there were a few fries in contact with the bottom of the pot initially which caused to brown a little before the others.  I may look in to using a small, round cooling rack next time to keep them from coming into contact with the bottom next time.

Now on to the chicken.  A two stage breading station was setup with plain flour on one side and a mixture of buttermilk, the spice mix and some of the purge from the cooking bag in the other.  One of the cold chicken breasts was first dredged in the flour, then coated with the buttermilk mix and then back into the flour.  Once everything was nice and coated it was allowed to rest on a piece of parchment paper while the oil got back up to temperature (which doesn't take too long for that small quantity of oil in rapid precision mode).  The chicken was carefully lowered in to the oil and cooked until the crust turned a nice golden-brown color.  Since the meat was pre-cooked there was no reason to worry about the internal temperature reaching 165°f, it just needs to be heated through.  I turned the chicken breast once, which can be a little tricky in such a small saucepan so care is needed to prevent being splashed with boiling hot oil.  Once done a tablespoon of the hot oil was added to about the same measure of the spice mix and used to coat the chicken breast.

The chicken had great flavor and the sous vide fried chicken method ensures that the meat remains tender and juicy.  I could have done with a little more heat, next time I'm at the store I'll need to pick up some hot paprika to try and dial it up a bit.  All in all a successful first attempt, but still room to tweak the recipe.  I'll have to stop by Gus's Fried Chicken for some authentic inspiration!