“It’s a buttermilk breading system that combines hard and soft flours and produces a batter with a texture like tempura. “We use a batter similar to our crawfish tails,” said Alarcon. It works well on its own and as a base for the spicy Cajun version of the sandwich.Īlthough the spice in the chicken filet’s coating is the same as that in Popeyes fried chicken, the breading is completely different. Blue Plate mayonnaise, a fatty, creamy, local ingredient that “brings you back to New Orleans,” said Alarcon, became the overwhelming choice. Since Popeyes is a Louisiana brand, a priority was to find a sauce that reflects the chain’s roots. “We wanted to give customers the same experience all year long, and pickles accomplish that,” said Alarcon. In early iterations, lettuce and tomato were layered on the sandwich instead of pickles, but tomatoes are inconsistent and not always good during certain times of the year. “We wanted a pickle with snap,” she said. The final choice was a fresh, barrel-aged pickle from a Chicago supplier. Popeyes veered away from shelf-stable acidified pickles because they tasted of preservatives, Alarcon said. Alarcon worked with a local bakery to source a brioche bun with the right taste and texture. The team’s first task was to find great bread-artisan-style like an independent would use, a little sweet to contrast with the spice in the coating, but not too sweet. But from there, the search was on for the other components. “The bones had to be perfect in the original sandwich and every element had to stand on its own.”Īlarcon’s goal was to have Popeyes’ fried chicken sandwich “tell the story of the brand in a handheld, portable format,” so she uses the same seasoning that goes in the coating for the chain’s signature bone-in fried chicken. “We created a lot of chicken sandwiches before honing in on the flavors that resonated,” Alarcon said. But to understand how Popeyes localizes the sandwich in each market, it’s first necessary to recap the R&D behind the original.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |