Stan's Famous Chicken Sandwich Recipe

07/06/2024

And by famous, I mean that I have made this once, and it was earlier today. Nonetheless, it was delicious – but not too delicious where I will make it everyday. Which is a good thing, because I will have to go to the grocery store to get more groceries, and I don’t want to. That’s something I can only procrastinate for so long, anyways.

This recipe came from my need for something new in my routine, especially my food routine. I have been eating the same three meals for months now and I am going to have a conniption fit. This sandwich was satisfactory, the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. I’ll probably make another one in a few days, in lieu of my other meal that requires the frozen chicken. That’s not really a spoiler, you can assume a chicken sandwich has chicken in it. And you can also most likely assume that my version of chicken sandwich involves chicken of the frozen variety, as most of my repetitive meals are frozen food.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. You also need a cutting board. I didn’t explain that in the ingredients because it isn’t really an ingredient in the typical sense. But it is integral to this process. All of my toaster oven sandwiches start on the cutting board, are assembled throughout, and then, if needed, sliced into two triangles, THEN placed on a plate. To create a sandwich like this on a plate feels weird to me. It’s not flat enough, the slightly raised edge of a plate doesn’t make the bread itself slide together, but the ingredients become lopsided. It is a much more logical choice to start with the cutting board, even if that means one more dish to wash later. It’s not that hard.
  2. You have your cutting board. You’re going to take your two slices of white bread and spread the melted butter across them. You may ask why you are using two slices of Sara Lee’s Butter Bread instead of a bun, but this is no normal chicken sandwich recipe – because I don’t buy bread buns? I did not prepare for this day in any way, yet it still came, yet I must persevere. The day I wanted to make a chicken sandwich was not the same day I decided to purchase bread buns at my grocery store. That day has not even begun to cross the horizon, because the white bread was sufficient enough for this sandwich and all future sandwiches of this recipe. Put your buttered slices of bread in the toaster oven until golden brown.
  3. You got the chicken out of the freezer but forgot to start thawing it. Put it on a plate (not the cutting board) and put it in the microwave for a minute. You only got this brand of chicken filets because you thought they were chicken tenders, but didn’t really look at the words on the bag, just that it was green and the brand you are used to. You actually aren’t exactly used to this brand yet, this was a replacement for one of your safefoods that the new grocery store didn’t have. Fuck I really do not want to go to the grocery store this week. But the older safefood was chicken fries from a popular frozen chicken brand, and you survived on bag after bag of those for the first two years of college. And so it was kind of devastating to learn that the new grocery store didn’t have them. You found an old unopened bag in the back of your parent’s freezer and thought it could do you good, but it didn’t. The microwave will beep after a minute and you can flip your chicken filet over now, and set for another minute. But now you have this new brand of frozen chicken that still frustrates you even though its literally fucking frozen chicken and there are better things to spend your time and energy on. The microwave is beeping again so I guess another minute has passed and you can put the filet on one of the slices.
  4. On the other slice, put a heaping handful of your shredded cheese. Put more after that cause it gets a little flat in the toaster oven and this piece of chicken is kind of huge for this sandwich and you need a good ratio of cheese. Put both slices back in the toaster oven.
  5. Okay, even if it didn’t happen, it still happened, right? Like what I felt running down those tracks was real, right? I couldn’t have imagined the fear I felt? I don’t think that would serve me any purpose. I can run it in my head over and over and I can tell the story quite animatedly now, even though it’s only been two days. As I lay awake I can remember every single detail and run it through countless filters, unsure if those filters represent REAL? / NOT REAL? And I can ask myself constantly, “Was that real? Was there really someone chasing me on the train tracks behind the grocery store? Or was it my imagination?” I can, have, and will continue to ask myself this over and over but it is always followed up with a similar question: does it matter? The fear I felt was real. I’ve never felt anything like that before, I’ve never been in a situation like that before. I hope I never have to again. I am so fucking scared and I’ve been sleeping with the lights on like a little kid. So that’s how I can prove to myself that “any of that was real.”
  6. Pull slices out of the toaster when cheese is fully melted. Now you want to put these back onto the cutting board for your final steps of this sandwich, but you can clean off the plate you used to warm up the chicken in a minute. Drizzle your barbecue sauce across the chicken, but not the cheese. That’s too much barbecue sauce.
  7. Assemble your sandwich by placing the cheese slice onto the chicken. This filet really is too big for this sandwich, huh? So you get a paper towel to squarsh it down, GENTLY, you cannot risk compromising the bread. And also the barbecue sauce will squirt out the sides if you do it too violently. If you are going to love this sandwich, you gotta treat it with love while creating it.
  8. You are going to drink a Dr. Pepper Strawberries & Cream (Zero Sugar) with this sorry man I don’t care if you don’t like Dr. Pepper or soda at all but that’s what we have on tap tonight and this is my recipe, my house, my rules.
  9. But you can enjoy this sandwich however you like, sitting normally at a kitchen table, or watching TV, or the prime option: watching YouTube or TikTok, because you are aware and terrified of your rapidly declining attention span. That shit is awesome.

And that’s all there is to it. Like I said I’ve only made this sandwich once, but I look forward to making it again. I’ve only got like two filets left in the bag, but I’m stocked up on the other ingredients. I don’t know how soon I’ll make it again, though, I have other food I should probably go through first. And I should also try it with a proper bun sometime. But that means going to the grocery store, and as I stated before, I cannot explain to you how badly I do not want to go to the grocery store.