Hot Chicken Sandwich - The FoodOlic recipes (2024)

A popular dish from Canada, the famous hot chicken sandwich consists of shredded leftovers of chicken or turkey sandwich covered with homemade gravy and sweet peas.

A ‘hot chicken sandwich’ or simply ‘Hot Chicken‘ is one of those forgotten top 10 traditional dishesfrom Canada. It’s not spicy at all, in contrary to the famous Nashville hot chicken. It’s mostly popular in the French-speaking part of Canada. As a kid, I used to love it when my mom would do a whole roasted chicken for dinner, not because I loved the dish but because I knew I would get my favourite meal the next day!

If you go visit the Eastern part of Canada, you’ll see this dish in many “Casse-croûte”(tiny restaurants, for a quick bite, by the road), or roasted chicken fast food chains. This dish isn’t what I would call: high gastronomy… it’s more of a comfort food or akid-friendly meal. Of course, back in Canada, they sell the “hot chicken” sauce/gravy in every supermarket. Although I must say, these sauces are way too salty and filled with stabilizers, enhancers, colouring, etc. In other words, nothing like a homemade hot chicken gravy like this one!

Homemade Gravy

There’s nothing like real homemade gravy, made with real stock or broth! Of course, it’s time-consuming but well worth it! Living abroad for a long now, I had to learn how to make my own gravy for all those meals from home; from poutine to hot chicken. The technique is terribly easy to make, simply let some broth reduce for 30 minutes on high heat while keeping an eye on it, of course. Of course, if you have no time, go ahead with a pre-made mix.

Tips

• Use a homemade broth, or ask your butcher if he’s got any, the stuff they sell in the supermarket is mainly salt so you won’t get this authentic meaty brown sauce result.
• Go generously on the black pepper, don’t be shy
• Don’t forget to try your gravy in the end, to adjust the salt
• If you like it darker and unctuous you can always add a tiny bit of dark chocolate in the end
• The last ingredient that goes in: the butter, is mainly to give the gravy this shiny finish

The Right Pan

To make the gravy/brown sauce for this particular dish it’s super simple. Simply reduce a good, homemade or butcher’s broth. It takes quite a long to reduce the broth but if you use a larger pan, the evaporation surface will be much larger consequently it’s going to evaporate faster. Once it’s almost all done, you can transfer it back to a smaller pot to finish it up. I usually make some baked homemade potato wedges next to my hot chicken which takes the same amount of time.

Storage

You can keep the extra gravy for up to 4 days in the fridge. Otherwise, it’s a good idea to make small quantities in an ice cube tray to freeze. These little frozen cubes go everywhere! For example; pasta or Asian noodles, an extra kick to a soup or else. Can be kept for up to 4-5 months in the freezer.

So let’s turn those leftovers of a roasted chicken into a whole new dish!