The Best Grilled Chicken Sandwich Ever

There are a lot of things I could tell you about a trip I took to Colombia several years ago. I could tell you about the shootout that erupted on the street in Cali just seconds after I had stepped inside my flat. I could tell you about the bonfire-roasted wild rat I ate one night on a remote Pacific beach. I could tell you about kicking back shots of aguardiente in sweaty salsa clubs until dawn, or about the narcotráfico I got entangled with one night, a guy who casually threatened the life of a cigarette vendor when she didn't have the brand he wanted (I can't tell you how relieved I was to get away from him unscathed). But instead, I'm going to tell you about a chicken sandwich.

Chicken sandwiches, generally speaking, don't exist to excite. They're trustworthy and filling and totally vanilla, the sensible footwear of sandwiches. So you can imagine my disappointment when, after my friends from Cali suggested burgers for dinner, we arrived at a place where the only meat on the grill was chicken breast.

"So, you call these burgers even when it's chicken?" I asked, still hopeful I'd somehow overlooked the beef.

And thus I learned that in Colombia, if it's served hamburger-style on a hamburger bun, it's a hamburger. Resigned, I ordered one.

Hamburger lovers of the world, I ask you, what would it take for a chicken "burger" to pleasantly surprise you after you had your hopes set on beef? What would it take to truly impress you? What would it take to blow your mind so completely that you no longer care about "real" burgers? I'd like to introduce you to that sandwich, or at least, to my version of it. Call it what you want—a burger, a sandwich—it doesn't really matter. What matters is that this is arguably the best chicken sandwich in the world.

Is this the only great grilled chicken sandwich recipe in the world? No, but the lessons you can learn from this one can be applied to any other. Consider this your blueprint to not only this pitch-perfect grilled chicken sandwich, but any other you can dream up.

The Building Blocks

This sandwich, for all its power and glory, is very, very simple, and very easy to make. The building blocks include chicken, bacon, iceberg lettuce, crushed ruffled potato chips, mayo, tomato, a green sauce, and a bun. Each fulfills a role—some optional, some essential—required for grilled chicken sandwich greatness.

Tactic 1: Build Robust Flavor

You will notice that, yes, there is bacon in this thing, and yes, that is partly why it's so good. It'd still be good even without the bacon, but let's be real, chicken is chicken and bacon is bacon and that's all there is to it. But you don't have to use bacon for similar effect—what's important here is what the bacon is adding, namely a robust savoriness and additional layers of smoke to enhance the overall grilled effect. You could skip the bacon and rub the chicken in a spice mixture that includes Spanish paprika, or lean on another umami-rich ingredient like grilled mushrooms, cheese, or roasted tomatoes.

To grill the chicken, I used Josh Bousel's rock-solid method. First, he quickly pounds the breasts to flatten them, which guarantees that they cook evenly. Then he dry-brines them for 30 minutes, which helps keep them juicy despite the dry heat of the grill. You can use those 30 minutes to get other things ready, like making the green sauce and preheating your grill.

To grill the bacon, I borrowed Kenji's clever method, which involves flipping the thick-cut rashers right on the edge of a two-zone fire. That way, they're exposed to just enough heat to get crisp, but not so much that they blacken from flare-ups caused by excessive dripping grease.

I added one step when grilling the chicken, brushing them with an avocado-jalapeño-cilantro green sauce just a minute or two before they come off the grill. If there are any readers out there who know more about Colombian burgers than I do, I can't claim this sauce is authentic or correct. I can claim that it's really tasty. The last-minute brushing quickly cooks the sauce onto the breasts without burning it, but don't worry, we'll add some more fresh sauce later.

Tactic 2: Condiments, Toppings, and Thoughtful Assembly

Once the chicken and bacon are cooked, all that's left is to toast the buns and assemble the sandwiches.

How you assemble this sandwich is critical because you want to make sure it's saucy and juicy enough. A good beef burger, in my book, has to have enough fat flowing from the patty that it runs down my hands, over my wrists, and at least attempts a journey along my forearms. I expect no less with this sandwich. But chicken breast, even when perfectly cooked, isn't the kind of meat that's prone to dripping juices, so it needs some help from lots and lots of mayo and sauce. To achieve that, you need ample slatherings of at least one condiment—and more than one isn't the worst idea! Here, I added the mayo in two layers, one on the top bun and one on the bottom, plus an extra dose of the green sauce. That's going to give us plenty of delicious, messy drips.

The other critical element is anything that adds texture. Here, there's we go all in, with crunchy crumbled potato chips. I went with ruffled because they're thicker and sturdier than regular chips, so they'd offer lots of crunch even when broken into small pieces and coated in sauce. And it's the crunch that we want—it's all about adding texture to an otherwise very soft, wet sandwich.

Crushed ruffled potato chips add lots of salty crunch. But that's not the only thing to deliver here—not in this sandwich, nor in any other grilled chicken sandwich. Look to fresh, crisp toppings like pickles, lettuce, and onions to compensate for chicken breast's uni-textural experience.

The shredded iceberg lettuce here is cool and fresh.

The grilled chicken breast, glistening with the green sauce, is next.

Bacon is bacon, 'nuff said.

Tomato adds another fresh flavor and lots of its own juice; another spoonful of spicy green sauce amps up the drip factor and adds even more bold flavor.

The top bun gets even more mayo. Slather it on!

One more sprinkling of potato chips and you can close the sandwich. Again, it's all about layers of flavor and texture.

Just try not to make a mess...