Nashville Hot Chicken
Fiery food triggers conflicting responses. Some dread its spice. Others crave it like a high. Nashville hot chicken enthusiasts fall into the latter camp. When made properly, this rust-red, speckled creation born of spice-tinted frying oil renders crunchy chicken, crusted with all manner of ground chiles and peppers. It’s the devil’s breath incarnate—a dish that aims to rewire your brain—and maybe some organs too.
For the uninitiated, Nashville hot chicken was invented out of revenge. Legend goes that during the Great Depression, Thornton Prince, a Music City lothario, had so angered his “steady girl” through his late-night antics that she weaponized a batch of fried chicken with ground cayenne pepper. It backfired. He became a hot-chicken evangelist, opening Prince’s Hot Chicken in 1945.
Today his great niece André Prince Jeffries still runs that shrine and worship of the chicken has spread across the country thanks to new-school versions like Hattie B’s in Nashville and Howlin’ Ray’s in Los Angeles. The latter was founded as a food truck by fine-dining chef Johnny Ray Zone. Los Angeles chain Dave’s Hot Chicken spread so rapidly with backing of the rapper Drake that it sold in a deal worth $1 billion. Now, KFC and Popeyes have versions that only wish they could be as hot as Prince’s.
A good recipe has the chicken soaking in a dry brine overnight, then double dredged in flour before deep frying. The key is a spice mix basted over the chicken. Zone laces his with ghost peppers, habanero, Trinidad scorpion and cayenne pepper for a kaleidoscopic heat. The resulting thin-but-sturdy crust creates different spice levels. A slight sweetness assuages the palate.
Zone’s hottest offering is called Howlin’, a level so intense that one must sign a disclaimer and only eat the chicken while wearing black rubber gloves. If Prince’s “steady girl” had devised a recipe this diabolical, he might have backed off. Thankfully, the legendary fried chicken variant is now ubiquitous, a boon for fans of the spiciest dish on earth.
