Hold the Bread: KFC’s Double Down Reimagined

On a recent day trip to Milwaukee, Mindy and I stopped by “Milwaukee’s Asian Market Phongsavan” to pick up some frozen Hmong sausages–we usually get them from Woodman’s in Kenosha but they didn’t have them the last time we were there–and a quick bite before the drive back to the Chicago area. Phongsavan looked different than the last time we were there, with a larger portion of the space taken up by a single food market and fewer of the small vendors we’d experienced on our previous trip. There was still a food court in the rear, and some tables set up entirely too close together, but with almost nobody there we felt confident enough to buy some favorites. They were out of the cooked sausages but we were able to pick up some laab, sticky rice, crispy pork belly, and Hmong stuffed chicken wings, which more than made up for the lack of sausages that day.

These wings are excellent. Bone removed, filled with finely shredded vegetables, glass noodles, and seasoned cooked ground pork, they are much like a spring roll, but with a deboned chicken wing in place of the rice paper wrap, essentially the bread of a spring roll.

It’s funny, I think of KFC’s Double Down as such an aberrant thing, such a weird one-off American and specifically Midwestern goof of a food dare, but it is hardly unique in its strategy of taking a dish of meat and bread, and replacing the bread with more meat. In Taiwan, there’s a snack that consists of a small sausage nestled inside a larger sausage as a bun. I suppose if one wanted to stretch things, one could say that Chicken Cordon Bleu is a ham and cheese sandwich that swaps out the bread for a fried cutlet. Is Chicken Kiev just bread and butter with fried chicken in place of the bread? Perhaps now we’ve gone too far. But I’m certain there are other examples out there. (Please leave a comment with your favorite, if you have one)

Here in the Midwest, we have a few more examples.

This is the “Crustless” pizza from Chicago-area deep dish chain Lou Malnati’s. This pizza forgoes a crust entirely–it’s a bit of a shame, actually, since Lou Malnati’s is known for their flaky and buttery crust–and the cheese and tomato sauce rest on a disk of Italian sausage instead. In downstate Illinois and in neighboring states where the breaded pork tenderloin sandwich is common, some places make pizza tenderloins as well. These are typically served in a pizza box, and put tomato sauce, melted mozzarella cheese, and customizable pizza toppings on top of one of the typically plate-sized breaded and fried pork tenderloins. The restaurants offering pizzaloins seem to cluster around the Peoria area, but there have also been sightings in Galesburg, the quad cities, and points west; in Taylorville, and even down in Barry, IL, just down the road from my hometown of Quincy.

Even in the world of fast food, KFC isn’t alone, with Taco Bell in the past few years having introduced the Naked Chicken Chalupa, a taco with a fried chicken shell, and the Naked Chicken Chips, which are basically nacho-shaped chicken nuggets that you can dip in nacho cheese. I think we can all agree that these were stunning innovations in the world of drive-thru cuisine that were taken from us far too soon.

So was the Double Down. Originally announced in a press release dated April 1st, 2010, the bunless chicken sandwich was actually launched later that month and became immensely popular, so much so that KFC extended its initial run beyond the one month or so it was originally supposed to be available. At various points in time and countries around the globe, different versions of it have been available–a spicier “Zinger” version, the Mozzarella Zinger version, the “Zinger King” version containing a hamburger that was only available in Korea, the Double Down Dog that hit the Phillipine market in extremely limited quantities. Currently, the Double Down does not seem to be available in the US market, though it recently resurfaced for a brief run in the UK.

So we can’t go get one. That’s never stopped us before.

Back in another time, another life it seems, I worked at three different KFC restaurants–one in my hometown, then later one in Southern Illinois, then later yet one in the Chicago suburbs. I’d like to say that I know KFC. But the truth is, it’s been long enough that I don’t remember much, and even between the first and subsequent restaurants where I worked there were changes in recipes and methods.

The basics of the KFC breading method for their Extra Crispy chicken remained fairly static though. There is a breading stand consisting of a tub of seasoned flour with a wire basket in it, and a deeper pan of water with a long-handled wire basket in it. Something like this:

The gist of the method, for Extra Crispy chicken, was this: the chicken came already sectioned into 8 pieces per chicken–2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 breasts and 2 wings. It was added directly to the seasoned flour from the bag and coated thoroughly. Then it was shaken using the rectangular wire basket to remove excess flour, tipped into the other long-handled wire basket, and dunked twice into the water. Excess water was shaken off and then the chicken was readded to the seasoned flour, coated thoroughly once again, and shaken in the rectangular basket again.

KFC’s original recipe chicken uses only a single coating of flour, a wet-dry approach rather than the dry-wet-dry used by the Extra Crispy, and it is fried in something like a pressure cooker to give it the softer coating the original recipe chicken is known for. That, however, is not what I’m after.

The shaking in the baskets does more than simply allow excess flour or water to drain away. It also creates the texture of the breading, that excessive and pebbly coating that may conceivably outweigh the chicken on a typical KFC wing or a leg. I can’t really duplicate that process at home, at least not precisely. Besides, the KFC breading stations are designed to let one bread large amounts of chicken at a time, but they are not designed to be neat or easy-to-clean. A typical shift in the kitchen at a KFC will result in a good half-inch coating of floury gunk on nearly every exposed surface of your body.

In the home kitchen, you can approximate the KFC technique by using large, gallon-or-greater sized bags for your wet and dry stations.

This is not a KFC copycat recipe. It was me trying to approximate what I remembered about the smell and flavor of KFC’s extra crispy chicken while adding some improvements based on my own knowledge of cooking.

When the chicken is breaded, before it’s fried, it’ll look something like this.

That pebbly texture is what the KFC breading process is designed to create, and KFC does it a lot more effectively than I do. But this chicken is pretty damn good anyway.

The classic KFC Double Down according to the descriptions I’ve read consists of 2 fried chicken breasts, 2 slices of bacon, 1 slice of Monterey Jack cheese (I couldn’t find sliced Monterrey Jack so I picked up some Colby Jack instead.), 1 slice of Pepperjack cheese, and “Colonel’s Sauce,” a sauce that I don’t believe existed at KFC restaurants before or after the Double Down’s run. Some versions appear to use BBQ sauce instead. But this Colonel’s sauce intrigued me. The copycat recipes I’ve found seem to treat it as a sort of amped-up Fry Sauce / Salsa Golf / Mayochup, with Worcestershire and cayenne pepper and maybe even some horseradish. That sounds an awful lot like the Cajun-style remoulade I used to make to serve with boudin balls, but without the capers. I decided to run with that and make a caperless remoulade for my “Colonel’s Sauce.”

This sauce, especially with that freshly-grated horseradish, is a real blast of flavor. Slightly sweet from the ketchup, with the kick of the cayenne and the hot sauce and the horseradish, not to mention the raw garlic, it can be overwhelming, especially for the first day or so. You might want to make it ahead of time and let it mellow in the fridge overnight. I want that big crazy horseradish sting though. I want to feel as if my head is exploding. I would eat this sauce straight out of the bowl with some potato chips or basically anything crisp and salty and snacky.

There’s not much to assembling this sandwich. You start with the chicken, add the cheese and the bacon, then the sauce.

To finish, just put the two halves together. Voila! The Double Down.

So how does it taste?

It tastes like fried chicken.

Even with the nice thick-cut bacon I used, the hot pepperjack cheese, the extremely potent sauce I made–the balance is just way off. All I could taste was the fried chicken. Now that is not necessarily a bad thing. I did make some pretty fantastic fried chicken for this purpose. But I was just a little let down. All this work, and that’s what I get?

So I improved it.

The All In

I’m calling this the ALL IN because 1) it maintains the completely irrelevant gambling theme of the original sandwich’s name, and 2) I basically took ALL the stuff from a double down and put it IN a wrap.

Yes, a wrap. It would be fine in a sandwich. It might even be great in a sandwich. But I thought this particular combination of ingredients would work best in a wrap. I started with a Shrak flatbread that I get from Alwatan Bakery in Bridgeview, IL, the same bread that I used for our homemade shawarma wraps. These shrak are similar to a flour tortilla but are somehow both thinner and sturdier, with better texture and flavor.

To this I added 1 fried chicken breast, cut into strips. Yes, I know I said I was putting ALL the stuff from the double down in, but the two chicken breasts used in the double down are the problem, throwing off the balance of the entire dish. If you want two fried chicken breasts, just eat some fried chicken. You won’t be missing anything.

On top of the fried chicken, I added a slice of pepperjack and two slices of bacon

Then tomato slices, the Cajun-style remoulade I was using in place of the Colonel’s Sauce, and a handful of shredded iceberg lettuce. The vegetables are a non-canonical addition I know but 1) the shredded lettuce is absolutely vital, providing a little bit of crisp texture as well as suspending the remoulade in a matrix of greenery that allows it to be present in every bite, and 2) you’re a grown person, eat your damn vegetables!

Then I closed the shrak bread around everything burrito-style and finished it on a griddle just enough to set the shape so it wouldn’t come open.

So may I present to you, Sandwich Tribunal’s upgrade to the Double Down: ALL IN!

We have here multiple interacting combinations of really tasty things, that all come together in a harmonious whole. The proverbial “greater than the sum of its parts” that we’re looking for when we make a sandwich (or a wrap), even though the parts in question for this sandwich are quite good to begin with. There’s the crisp, herby, salty fried chicken, the cool lettuce and zesty sauce, the crisp bacon with its favorite partner the tomato nestled right up against it. Even the pepperjack cheese has a place here, though I’m not always a fan of cheese on fried chicken.

Be sure to let me know if KFC ever brings the Double Down back in the US, ’cause I’d like to try the real thing one day. I’m sure that after this it will be a letdown though. Frankly, KFC will never put something this good on the menu, but I implore you to give it a shot yourself. I have, after all, provided recipes for both the chicken and the sauce above. If you are unable to source shrak bread, I suppose you could get by with a burrito-sized flour tortilla, though it won’t be quite as good. Just make sure to crisp that tortilla up on the griddle so it’s less boring.