Warning: if you’re hungry or in danger of becoming hungry, proceed with caution.

If you’ve visited a restaurant or ordered out in the past year, you may have noticed an item appearing on menus around the Northeast called “Nashville hot chicken.” What’s this? How is it different from regular spicy chicken, or buffalo sauce? Doesn’t this restaurant know we’re nowhere near Nashville?

Readers, friends, foodies: believe the hype. I had the great privilege of attending the Public Library Association Conference in Nashville, TN in February 2020 and have experienced firsthand the glory that is Nashville hot chicken… in fact I experienced it several times in several days. While I haven’t found a New England restaurant serving Nashville hot chicken that quite lives up to the real deal, I will keep hunting through local menus and sampling new versions because the real McCoy is just that good. If not life-changing, it was at least palette-changing.

My coworkers and I arrived in Nashville and did what any hungry traveler would do – ask the Lyft driver where they like to eat and what iconic dish they recommend we have to try before leaving Nashville. Time and again the answer we received was Nashville hot chicken, and everyone we asked had their own local spot they claimed made the best spicy bird in town. Realize that at this point in my life, I didn’t really care for fried chicken – at all. While I liked spicy foods, I could barely stand to eat a chicken wing. I shrugged, thinking I might as well try it as long as I’m here, and as long as everyone else was trying it…

We made our way to Hattie B’s Hot Chicken Restaurant, a Nashville-based chain that specializes in hot chicken and one of the major purveyors of the dish. Full disclosure, when it comes to hot chicken, I’m in the Hattie B’s camp. According to the book Nashville Eats by Jennifer Justus, the original hot chicken was created by Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in the 1930s, and this local chain is still very much thriving today.

Enough suspense – what is it like to eat hot chicken? The chicken is served atop a slice of thick white bread, garnished with bright green dill pickle slices, and ideally accompanied by southern food sides of your choice such as collard greens, black-eyed pea salad, or cornbread. The chicken could be a mix of wings, leg, or breast, and arrives piping hot and rusty red-orange in color. Breaded and coated with spices, the chicken should glisten with just a bit of sauce from the skillet. A fork and knife are required for this meal, and cutting into the hot chicken releases a steamy aroma of spices.

Hot chicken can be ordered mild, hot, or extra hot, with extra hot being recommended for only true lovers of spicy cuisine. With a crispy crunchy outside and a moist juicy inside, the dish is so much more than spicy heat, however. Hattie B’s executive chef, John Lassater, shared in The Southerner’s Cookbook that the spice blends for hot chicken are typically closely-guarded secrets but that cayenne pepper, onion powder, and garlic feature heavily in the flavor profile. My own impression was that a depth of herbal flavor supported the spicy heat of the bird, and the moistness of the meat was not just grease from the frying process. As Lassater points out, brining the poultry in buttermilk and vinegar is a vital step, and sets the recipe apart; that recipe can be found in The Southerner’s Cookbook, by the way.

You don’t have to enjoy spicy food to appreciate that southern chefs are champions at making fried chicken. Rebecca Lang wrote an entire cookbook with variations on the cuisine called Fried Chicken: Recipes for the Crispy, Crunchy Comfort-Food Classic. Lang breaks fried chicken into three different categories: skillet fried, deep fried, and combination fried. While Lang classifies Tennessee Hot Chicken (clearly with a nod to Nashville) as a deep fried variety, but others contend that hot chicken should be skillet fried. Lang also takes the time to describe at-home chicken frying in detail, as does Edward Lee in Smoke & Pickles, so that home chefs can tackle the frying process with guidance.

Want to try making Nashville hot chicken at home but skip some of the calories? While the genuine article is beyond delicious, I concede that it is most definitely not healthy. One of the library’s ebook lending services, Hoopla, has an ebook called Air Fry Genius by Meredith Laurence. The book has a recipe for Nashville hot chicken. While I’ve never tasted hot chicken from an air fryer, if you have one of these appliances then the recipe is worth a try.

If your appetite for southern cooking has been whetted you might want to check out these or other southern cuisine cookbooks from our collection, such as Back Home with the Neelys, Southern Plate, or volume one or two of Magnolia Table by Joanna Gaines. If I haven’t piqued your curiosity about Nashville hot chicken yet, then take a note from the author of Nashville Eats, “In a city of stars, Nashville’s hot chicken burns brightly… And more than just a heat thing, hot chicken stays with you. It can alter a person’s state of being, drawing him back for more.”

Liz Reed is the Adult and Information Services Department Head at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the May 13, 2021 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.