Double Down - DONE

I first heard about KFC's Double Down sandwich on the A.V. Club's blog. For those of you who are unaware, the Double Down is a KFC test sandwich that involves substituting the buns for fried chicken breasts. Bacon, cheese and "special sauce" is between the chicken. There is no doubt that this is a greasy, gluttonous mess of a "sandwich", but an abomination? I don't think so. I was very disappointed to read that the author of the A.V. Club's post could not even keep his down. Fried chicken, bacon, cheese - how could this be bad?


Since I do not live in one of the two cities testing the Double Down, a friend and I decided to craft our own Double Down from scratch. Since I didn't see how I would ever be able to fit two stacked fried chicken breasts into my mouth, chicken breast tenders pounded thin were used. Then we seasoned them with a cajun spice mix, breaded them in panko, and fried in canola oil. After the top and bottom "buns" were fried and salted we put three pieces of bacon per sandwich (up from two in the KFC version - why not?) and melted colby-jack cheese on top under the broiler. The KFC version calls for pepper jack and swiss so we took a little poetic license there too. I have no idea what a KFC "special sauce" is, but my special sauce is bacon gravy served on the side for dipping. Delicious. We had a lot of gravy so we served the sandwich with mashed potatoes.



Now for the moment of truth - the first bite... Crunchy, cheesy, bacony with just a hint of spice. In a word - PERFECTION.

This sandwich is EVEN BETTER than it sounds! Had it not been for the scrumptious, albiet waste of space, mashed potatoes I could have had another. Soooooo good.

If you don't live in Providence RI or Omaha NE I encourage you to make your own Double Down at home. It's very simple and worth the effort. Enjoy!