The Unique Cooking Method That Makes Chick-Fil-A Sandwiches So Good

Chick-fil-A might have the slowest fast food drive-thru, but it's because they're frequently busy. With cars wrapping around the building in a rush, staff must work against the clock to put out orders. An efficient workflow ensures that your chicken sandwich arrives hot and ready, regardless of how long you've waited. Much of this credit goes to one handy piece of kitchen equipment: a pressure fryer.

Not to be confused with an Instant Pot-style pressure cooker, a pressure fryer is a specialized type of deep fryer that comes with a lid. It cooks food by lowering it into a vat of oil and frying at high heat. The big difference is that pressure fryers heat food faster than deep fryers. According to Henny Penny, the manufacturer of Chick-fil-A's pressure fryers, this method reduces the heat time by 10% to 30% — quicker than both deep frying and air frying.

For the chicken to fry thoroughly, its water content must reach a boiling point. The pressure fryer's lid creates a tight seal where a pressure of around 12 psi increases that boiling point from 212 degrees Fahrenheit to around 240 degrees Fahrenheit. To put it simply, the juices inside the Chick-fil-A sandwich cook faster without losing moisture or flavor.

The Chick-fil-A original chicken sandwich is the king of fast food chicken sandwiches for a reason. A lot of thought went into its creation, from the preparation to the packaging. The fried chicken patties are made fresh in-store, dipped raw into the wet batter and breading before cooking in a pressure fryer full of peanut oil. This oil has a high smoke point and pleasant nutty flavor that makes it ideal for the savory chicken sandwich. The chicken patty can form a crispy crust and moist inside without tasting downright soggy.

After a dip in the pressure fryer, the fresh fried chicken is put between two buttered buns with dill pickles. While some restaurants wrap their sandwiches in paper packaging, Chick-fil-A often uses an insulated bag to trap the steam inside, keeping the sandwich warm and soft. These combined efforts come together to create the iconic Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich people have come to know and love.