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alternatives to Chik-Fil-A
Oct. 14th, 2019 09:53 pmSo... Chik-Fil-A's corporate offices are more than a little evil, right? And that's actually inconvenient as hell, because their food is genuinely tasty, quality fast food protein.
Straight up boycotting was — not simple for me, because my crazy is special sometimes and making a category of food Forbidden does not go well. My solution was to institute the poly people tax: every purchase I make at Chik-Fil-A has to be matched with a donation to a good cause. The two places I donated to under this tax were Scarleteen and Planned Parenthood and it's only been two places — and that was many years ago, too — because that was enough to stop my brain from thinking of Chik-Fil-A as a place that serves food. See, their food is tasty but not that cheap for fast food; doubling the cost, for me, makes it spendy enough that the craving runs up hard against "okay, but they're not twenty fucking dollars worth of tasty," and I figure something else out. I haven't personally actually had the craving in a long time, as a result.
But I know not everyone has as much luck with brain/body wrangling, even in the face of some fucking bullshit, and while I'm going to judge the FUCK out of you if you performatively eat there as a demonstration of how much you hate queer people — listen, I do entirely get that existing in this world is a series of compromises and that none of us is fucking pure, so: if you eat there occasionally because it's the only thing available that works... well, sure I want you to try and find an alternative, but I'm a crip. I Get It. Sometimes you ain't got good choices, and you make the one that lets you survive the now. I mean, there ARE alternatives in the quality protein fast food market. They're not everywhere, though, and if your blood sugar's in the basement you gotta do what you gotta do.
(Still, find a fucking alternative if you can. If you can't, okay. But if you can, do.)
Anyway, though, I will admit none of the alternatives out there are the same, so if what you're craving is The Exact Thing, they don't work.
So I am here to tell you: Serious Eats' copycat Chik-Fil-A recipe (https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/07/homemade-chick-fil-a-sandwiches-recipe.html) is pretty fuckin' accurate. It's delicious, and unlike so many of López-Alt's recipes on the Food Lab, it's actually not that difficult or fussy. (I enjoy many of his recipes there but he's more fucking ludicrous than Alton Brown on a lot of things, and I very frequently look at Alton and go "....no, over here in the real world no one is fucking doing that," a lot. So yeah.) The most irritating thing to me is, no lie, stirring the brine long enough for the salt and sugar to fully dissolve. I mean, it takes time to bread the chicken and then fry it, obviously, but it's not really annoying. I do recommend nitrile gloves, though. They're great for avoiding tactile grossity when dealing with raw meat of any kind, for example, or wetted flour mixtures.
It works fine with other cuts of chicken, btw — I do it with chicken tenders, not filleted breasts, and don't make sandwiches. The main concern with tenders is making sure that it cooks through if there's a particularly thick tender. So, there's definitely no reason you couldn't do it with smaller nuggets, either — you'll just want to watch the browning/timing closely with a smaller piece of meat!
Straight up boycotting was — not simple for me, because my crazy is special sometimes and making a category of food Forbidden does not go well. My solution was to institute the poly people tax: every purchase I make at Chik-Fil-A has to be matched with a donation to a good cause. The two places I donated to under this tax were Scarleteen and Planned Parenthood and it's only been two places — and that was many years ago, too — because that was enough to stop my brain from thinking of Chik-Fil-A as a place that serves food. See, their food is tasty but not that cheap for fast food; doubling the cost, for me, makes it spendy enough that the craving runs up hard against "okay, but they're not twenty fucking dollars worth of tasty," and I figure something else out. I haven't personally actually had the craving in a long time, as a result.
But I know not everyone has as much luck with brain/body wrangling, even in the face of some fucking bullshit, and while I'm going to judge the FUCK out of you if you performatively eat there as a demonstration of how much you hate queer people — listen, I do entirely get that existing in this world is a series of compromises and that none of us is fucking pure, so: if you eat there occasionally because it's the only thing available that works... well, sure I want you to try and find an alternative, but I'm a crip. I Get It. Sometimes you ain't got good choices, and you make the one that lets you survive the now. I mean, there ARE alternatives in the quality protein fast food market. They're not everywhere, though, and if your blood sugar's in the basement you gotta do what you gotta do.
(Still, find a fucking alternative if you can. If you can't, okay. But if you can, do.)
Anyway, though, I will admit none of the alternatives out there are the same, so if what you're craving is The Exact Thing, they don't work.
So I am here to tell you: Serious Eats' copycat Chik-Fil-A recipe (https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/07/homemade-chick-fil-a-sandwiches-recipe.html) is pretty fuckin' accurate. It's delicious, and unlike so many of López-Alt's recipes on the Food Lab, it's actually not that difficult or fussy. (I enjoy many of his recipes there but he's more fucking ludicrous than Alton Brown on a lot of things, and I very frequently look at Alton and go "....no, over here in the real world no one is fucking doing that," a lot. So yeah.) The most irritating thing to me is, no lie, stirring the brine long enough for the salt and sugar to fully dissolve. I mean, it takes time to bread the chicken and then fry it, obviously, but it's not really annoying. I do recommend nitrile gloves, though. They're great for avoiding tactile grossity when dealing with raw meat of any kind, for example, or wetted flour mixtures.
It works fine with other cuts of chicken, btw — I do it with chicken tenders, not filleted breasts, and don't make sandwiches. The main concern with tenders is making sure that it cooks through if there's a particularly thick tender. So, there's definitely no reason you couldn't do it with smaller nuggets, either — you'll just want to watch the browning/timing closely with a smaller piece of meat!
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