I Use Aldi's Red Bag Chicken To Create The Perfect Sweet-And-Spicy Sandwich. Here's How You Can, Too

If you're an Aldi shopper, you likely already know about many of the German grocery chain's store-brand cult favorite products, like the Bake Shop oatmeal cranberry cookies and the Park Street Deli salted caramel cheesecake dip. The Kirkwood chicken breast fillets — affectionately known among Aldi shoppers as red bag chicken — are also a must-grab mainstay on grocery lists. The fillets are perfectly seasoned (the taste is strikingly similar to what you'd get at Chick-fil-A), crispy, and just begging to be doused in spicy sauce and blue cheese. I recently figured out how to make the perfect spicy chicken sandwich with red bag chicken, and it's cheaper (and faster) than hitting up Chick-fil-A (bonus: you can even enjoy it on Sundays). 

The concept of the sandwich is simple, and you can throw it together in your own kitchen in just a few minutes. I start by cooking one of the fillets — it's best in the air fryer, in my opinion, but in the oven works just fine as well. I usually cook them for a bit longer than the package directions indicate, as the sandwich is best when the breading on the chicken is super crispy. While the chicken is heating up, I combine a few tablespoons of buffalo sauce with a tablespoon of brown sugar and use this mixture to coat the chicken. The chicken gets a heavy-handed sprinkle of blue cheese crumbles before being placed on a fresh bun and served with a bit of blue cheese dressing on the side for dipping.

There's really no way to go wrong with this sandwich, but there are a few things you can do to take the flavors to the next level. First, when you're cooking the chicken, crispiness is key. If you're struggling to get the middle of the chicken patty crispy, which can be a little tricky, you might want to throw it under the broiler. 

When it comes to your blue cheese crumbles, choose the variety that you love (if you don't love blue cheese, you just haven't found the right one for you). Add some crumbles to the dressing on the side to really pack in extra flavor. If you truly can't get behind blue cheese, you could go with ranch or skip the cheese and dressing aspect altogether.

Finally, when it comes to the bun, use Aldi's Specially Selected brioche rolls. They have a taste that's not too far off from a King's Hawaiian roll (Aldi's King's Hawaiian dupe would also work in a pinch). They're just a bit sweet, and they're big enough to stand up to the larger size of the red bag chicken patties. If you want to go the extra mile, you can give your bun a light coating of butter and toast it up before assembling your sandwich. Of course, you can dress your sandwich up with veggies if you'd like — a few leaves of crispy romaine and some thinly sliced red onion can help create a restaurant-quality sandwich.