Trying to spend less money dining out? Tired of craving Chick-fil-A on a Sunday, only to remember they're closed? Dreaming of whipping up a tasty, Southern-style chicken sandwich from home whenever the craving strikes?
Aldi has you — and your fast-food chicken needs — covered.
By combining a few Aldi grocery products and following some simple copycat sauce recipes, I recently recreated one of my family's favorite meals, the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, in my kitchen.
The crave-worthy combo, which Aldi shared with TODAY Food, starts with "red bag chicken" (RBC), frozen, breaded chicken breast fillets that are so popular among Aldi fans that they have their own Facebook group.
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Paired with Aldi's Great Gherkins Hamburger Dill Pickle Chips and Specially Selected Brioche Buns, RBC makes the perfect dupe for the Chick-fil-A classic.
But Aldi has stepped up its Southern-style chicken game even further, releasing copycat recipes for Chick-fil-A and Polynesian sauces, both of which were developed by the Aldi test kitchen and can be made using ingredients that are readily available at the grocery chain.
I made my sauces in Mason jars, so the leftovers could be stored easily in my fridge.
To make Aldi's "Chick'n Dipp'n Sauce," I combined 1/4 cup of honey, two tablespoons of yellow mustard, 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce, 1/2 cup of mayonnaise and the juice of one lemon.
And for the "Polyn-esian Sauce," I mixed one cup of French dressing, one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and 1/2 a cup plus two tablespoons of honey together.
Then, per Aldi's instructions, I let both hang out in the refrigerator for about an hour to settle.
When it was time to use my sauces, I put RBC fillets in my air fryer on 390 F for about 12 minutes. The fillets came out of the air fryer golden-brown and crispy, and I served them on brioche buns that had been lightly browned in my toaster.
After topping the sandwiches with pickles, I served them to my family, who were amazed at how "dead-on" they were. And the sauces were also perfect copies of the ones we know and love from our favorite fast-food chicken restaurant.
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Aldi's chicken sandwich recipe was such a hit in my home that my 12-year-old son asked me to teach him how to cook his own RBC in our air fryer, and has been making chicken sandwiches by himself for lunch.
"I'd rather make these at home than drive all the way to Chick-fil-A," he explained. "And I think they taste fresher and better than ones we get in the drive-thru anyway."
