Chick-Fil-A Kinda Weber, Kinda Not

So we've been experimenting with the Serious Eats recipe for homemade Chick-Fil-A style chicken sandwiches. Prior to the finishing deep fry, I'm going to cook the breaded breasts on Weber. High temp to finish, or almost finish the breast meat prior to deep frying.

My wife prefers almost everything deep fried. Even her burgers! And my previous experience has shown that is the point of downfall for these copycat chicken sandwiches at my house. When we followed the original recipe and finished them by deep frying only, the crust was almost charred by the time I got the chicken breast cooked all the way through.

Last time I dealt with this by par-cooking the breast sous vide. Then breading and deep frying. It worked pretty good. This time I am skipping the sous vide, breading the filets and cooking them on the Weber along with a traditional chicken. The breasts will get pulled after half an hour or forty-five minutes. Then we'll save them for deep frying to finish the breading off. First time to do this, so I'm not sure what the result will look like, but I figure exposure to some heat and wood smoke will not be a bad thing.

In terms of cooking time, we flattened the breasts substantially before brining overnight. (After we retrieved them from the fridge this morning we coated them with the spice mix of paprika, cayenne, pepper, and MSG, then floured following Kenji-Alt's recommendation.) They will cook on the food grate in a pan and I'll check them a the 30 minute mark, and go from there.

Next time I will try battering them and doing Kettle Fried Chicken. One step at a time!

Sounds delicious. I am excited to see some pics!

Sorry, no pics! The charger for my camera is lost in the mail, apparently. My cell phone doesn't have a flash, and we finished these in the evening. However, the results were excellent. I had the chicken in the brine for 18 hours or more. The stringiness of the chicken was completely gone. The spice blend was pretty peppery even though I reduced the amount of pepper by half from the original recipe. Same for the milk and egg amount for washing the breasts. A 1/2 cup of milk and 1 egg is fine for doing the breasts I had.

Smoking on the Weber and Smokenator went well. I didn't have a water pan in the Smokenator. Food grate was running 195F to 205F and I smoked the breaded filets for 45 minutes. We cooked them later for 1 minute in 375F oil. They were superb and still held some of the nice smokey flavor even with deep frying. Definitely on my make occasionally and freeze for later use list.

Wow, I have never heard of breading before you put on the grill. I would've thought the flour would just turn to ash or all fall off when flipping. Have you tried any breadcrumbs like Panko or Italian? Wondering how those would stick to the crust while they are on the grill, and how they would brown up.

Steve, congrats on your success! Keep us updated on your method.