Before Popeyes introduced their iconic (and notorious) Classic Chicken Sandwich, there was another iteration on the menu, known as the Chicken Po'Boy Sandwich.
The Popeyes Chicken Po'Boy was itself iconic. It was a french bread roll with shredded lettuce, mayonnaise, and pickles, with two Popeyes Handcrafted Chicken Tenders. The bread melted in your mouth, and the chicken was completely complemented by the wrappings and fillings of the roll.Unfortunately, before the Classic Chicken Sandwich was introduced, the Chicken Po'Boy was removed from the menu. This was a terrible development. Popeyes kept the Shrimp Po'Boy, which was similar but made with Popeyes Popcorn Shrimp, and was a really sad example of a Shrimp Po'Boy, relatively. The Chicken Po'Boy was so much better!
The Classic Chicken Sandwich is really good, and has re-established Popeyes as the premier source for fast-food chicken in the country (even surpassing Chic-fil-a's offering). It's distinctive and tasty, putting the fried chicken to the forfront.
The Chicken Po'Boy didn't forward the chicken. Rather, it absorbed the chicken into a whole that was easily eaten without actually realizing that it was centered around fried chicken.
I loved the Chicken Po'Boy. (I wasn't the only person who did.)
As a side-note to my investigation into whether I could find a better Chicken Tender than Popeyes, I prepared a somewhat similar replica of the Chicken Po'Boy. This wasn't completely successful.
To start, I fired up the toaster oven, and put two tenders on a piece of aluminum foil and cooked them at 425F for 20 minutes. For this experiment, I used Publix Premium Whole Wheat Breaded Chicken Tenders.
Then, I put some garlic butter on a Publix Hoagie Roll. (The roll was more bstantial--chewy--than the French Bread that had been used by Popeyes. It added more taste than the roll that Popeyes had used.) I briefly toasted the roll, and then applied some pickles, some mayonnaise, and some shredded romaine lettuce.
When the tenders were done, I put them on the bed of lettuce and then sprinkled on some French's Louisiana Hot Sauce. I used a knife to press the contents and folded the roll around it, then cut the whole in half.
The thing that became immediately clear upon biting into this concoction was that the Publix Premium Tenders are much more flavorful (in terms of overbearing taste) than what Popeyes tenders are, or do. The taste of the tenders on my attempted duplication was way too much, relative to the taste of the roll of the taste of the other contents. (I mentioned in a previous post how the Public Premium tenders had a bit of a "patina" of taste similar to an Angel Food Cake. Plus, there's quite a bit of taste in the breading, which seems more dominant in the sandwich than Popeyes tenders are.)
This was a really good sandwich, one that I would make and eat again. But it wasn't duplicative of Popeyes Chicken Po'Boy. To achieve a better duplication, I probably have to follow some of the online recipes I found, including:
- https://www.allfreecopycatrecipes.com/Sandwiches/Popeyes-Fried-Chicken-Po-Boy-Copycat
- https://recipefairy.com/popeyes-chicken-po-boy/
- https://blogchef.net/popeyes-fried-chicken-po-boy-recipe/
Basically, there's too much extra flavor from the breading and presentation in the Publix Premium Tender. I need to find a tender with less flavor if I wish to recreate the Popeyes Chicken Po'Boy.
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