Hot Honey Fried Chicken, and Why the Honey Goes On Hot

Hot honey fried chicken runs on two heats, and the recipe is mostly about keeping them apart until the last minute. The first heat is steeped: chile flakes warmed slowly in honey until the honey itself carries the burn. The steep takes time because capsaicin dissolves readily in fat and alcohol and only reluctantly in water, and honey is mostly water-bound sugar. The second heat is splashed in at the end: a teaspoon of vinegar-carried hot sauce that keeps half a cup of honey from tasting like dessert. The hot sauce guide sorts sauces by what carries their heat; for this job the carrier you want is vinegar. Under all of that sits a buttermilk-brined, shaggy-crusted fried chicken with one rule that gives the dish its name: the honey goes on while the crust is still hot, so it thins on contact and runs into the cracks instead of sitting on top like a glaze. Cold chicken wears hot honey; hot chicken absorbs it.

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 lb (1.6 kg) bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and drumsticks
• 2 cups (480 ml) buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or 1 tablespoon fine sea salt, for the brine
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce, for the brine
• 2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (60 g) cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• 1 tablespoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or 1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt, for the dredge
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 quarts (2 L) neutral frying oil, such as peanut or canola
• 1/2 cup (170 g) honey
• 2 teaspoons chile flakes
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce or apple cider vinegar, for the honey
• Pinch of fine sea salt, for the honey

A note on the salt, because it is the difference between seasoned and salty: Diamond Crystal kosher salt measures roughly half as salty by volume as fine sea or table salt, so if you swap salts, halve the volume or weigh it. The grain-size arithmetic is spelled out in the salting guide.

Method

1. Brine. Whisk the buttermilk with the brine salt, the tablespoon of hot sauce and a few grinds of pepper in a large bowl. Add the chicken, turn to coat, cover and refrigerate 4 to 12 hours. The salted buttermilk seasons the meat all the way through and helps it hold its moisture through the fry; four hours is the floor, overnight is better.
2. Build the dredge. Whisk the flour, cornstarch, paprika, garlic powder, cayenne, dredge salt and pepper in a wide dish. Then the trick: drizzle in 3 tablespoons of the buttermilk brine and toss with your fingers until small shaggy bits form. Those bits fry into the craggy ridges that catch the honey later.
3. Dredge and rest. Lift the chicken from the brine without wiping it, drop each piece in the flour and press the coating on firmly with your palm. Rest the coated pieces on a wire rack for 10 minutes while the oil heats; the rest lets the flour hydrate and set, which keeps the crust attached to the chicken instead of to the pot.
4. Heat the oil. Bring 2 quarts of oil to 325°F in a heavy pot with a thermometer clipped to the side. In Denver, make that 310°F: deep-frying temperatures come down about 3°F for every 1,000 feet of elevation, or the crust browns before the bone warms.
5. Fry. Fry in two batches, turning occasionally, adjusting the flame so the oil recovers and holds near temperature, 12 to 16 minutes per batch. The chicken is done when it is deep golden brown and reads at least 165°F at the bone; thighs and drumsticks eat better a shade past that, toward 175°F, because their connective tissue wants the extra heat.
6. Rest on a rack. Move the fried chicken to a clean wire rack. Never paper towels, which steam the underside soft, and never a cover, which steams all of it.
7. Make the hot honey. While the chicken rests, warm the honey with the chile flakes over the lowest heat until it is loose and fragrant, well below a simmer, then pull it off the heat and let it steep 30 minutes. Do not boil it: fructose, honey's dominant sugar, starts caramelizing around 220°F, far earlier than table sugar, so a boiled honey trades its varietal aroma for a generic caramel one.
8. Finish hot. Stir the teaspoon of hot sauce or vinegar and a pinch of salt into the honey. Drizzle it over the chicken while both are still warm, and put the rest in a small pitcher on the table, because someone will ask.

Why it went wrong

Notes and variations

The honey matters. A robust wildflower or clover honey stands up to chile and frying; the honeys worth eating off a spoon, and how to tell them apart, are the subject of the honey guide. If the jar has crystallized, the same gentle warmth that infuses the chile will re-liquefy it, and the crystals were never a flaw to begin with, per the crystallization explainer. A shortcut that is not a compromise: Bees Knees Spicy Honey (shop Bees Knees Spicy Honey) is the ready-made version, warmed and finished with the vinegar splash. The flakes matter too. A fruity, smoky flake like Cobanero (shop Cobanero) makes a hot honey with flavor under the burn; plain pizzeria flakes make one with only the burn.

This is not Nashville hot chicken, which gets its heat from cayenne paste bloomed in the frying fat itself; here the crust stays honest and the heat arrives in the drizzle. Wings take 8 to 10 minutes; boneless thighs 6 to 8; breasts should come out right at 165°F and not a degree later. The browning on that crust is the Maillard reaction at work on flour proteins; the mechanics are in the browning explainer. In Denver, beyond the fry temperature, everything else about the recipe holds; the rest of the mile-high arithmetic lives in the altitude guide.

The honey, the chile flakes and the hot sauce are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com.

For four styles of hot honey, what the chile and vinegar do, and how to make a jar at home, see the hot honey guide.

Sources & Further Reading

• USDA FSIS: Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart
• Colorado State University Extension: High Altitude Food Preparation
• The Pantry Dispatch: Honey, The Complete Guide
• The Pantry Dispatch: Hot Sauce, The Complete Guide
• The Pantry Dispatch: Cooking at Altitude