Awhile back, a coworker told me that if you brine pieces of chicken in a jar of pickle juice and fry them up, it tastes like Chick-fil-A. As luck would have it, I had a couple of nearly-empty pickle jars in the fridge so we finished up the pickles and I left the juice in there. For quite some time, because I forgot about the coworker and the chicken. I found the pickle juice in there again and realized it was Sunday. Perfect! Since CFA is closed on Sunday, that was a great opportunity to try this on our own.
I Pinterested this idea and found it to be completely legit. I went with a recipe that called for powdered sugar in the coating, because sugar.
We also had coleslaw (CFA throwback) and peaches (sadly not in milkshake form) to round out the CFA experience.
The verdict? It tastes AWESOME. Just enough pickle flavor to make it seem like CFA but not too much to be weird. I don’t think it gets as crispy when you pan-fry instead of deep-fry, and I didn’t have the traditional peanut oil on hand so I just used vegetable oil. But still, yummy, although Tyler declared he would rather eat the chicken at Chick-fil-A!!