Yum Yum Chicken Sliders Recipe

If there's one recipe you spend a little extra time on this weekend, let it be this one. These chicken sliders might be a little bit more work than your average 30-minute meal, but they are juicy, crispy, spicy, and delicious, and will seriously impress anyone (even if that someone is yourself). They also aren't hard to make, provided you have decent knife skills and a good pot for frying. The chicken is first brined in buttermilk for tenderness, then coated in flour and fried until crispy golden brown, placed on slider buns, and coated in homemade yum yum and spicy slaw. Never had yum yum sauce? First of all, you need to make the one in this recipe; secondly, you need to get yourself to a hibachi restaurant.

Yum yum sauce is essentially a ketchup-mayo blend with a few extra steps. Namely, the sauce contains butter, sugar, and spices like garlic powder and paprika, which give it the distinctly "yummy" flavor. It's not acidic, like ketchup, and instead takes on a buttery flavor that pairs deliciously with meat. It's a staple sauce at hibachi restaurants, being that it pairs so well with seared steak and shrimp.

This recipe crafted by developer Michelle McGlinn takes a simple yum yum sauce and pairs it with crispy fried chicken and spicy slaw for the best, most flavorful sliders you'll ever eat.

To fry the chicken, you'll need buttermilk, boneless, skinless chicken thighs, flour, and vegetable or canola oil. Thighs will be the most tender and the perfect size for sliders, but you can also opt for chicken breasts, if preferred. For seasonings, you'll need paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, some of which you'll reuse for the yum yum. For the yum yum sauce, you'll also need mayonnaise, tomato paste, rice vinegar, sugar, butter, and water. For the slaw, you'll need one jalapeño, about a quarter head of cabbage (red or green both work), a small bunch of cilantro, Greek yogurt, garlic, and lime. Once you have all the elements, you'll just need 8 slider buns to put it together; we like plain white slider buns, but you can also opt for wheat, biscuits, or brioche.

The acid in buttermilk tenderizes the chicken, the milky texture keeping it moist while the salt breaks down the muscle proteins. The result is a juicy, tender chicken, with perfect all-around breading and plenty of moisture. To brine the chicken, just add the chicken to a sealable bag, pour in the buttermilk, add the salt, and seal the bag. You can also do this in a bowl, but the buttermilk will cover more chicken if locked into a pliable bag (plus, you avoid contaminating anything in your fridge). Leave the chicken for an hour or so for the best results; if you're short on time, try to brine the chicken for at least as long as it takes to prep everything else.

If you don't love shredding cabbage, just use a pre-sliced, bagged coleslaw mix instead. Once you have your chopped and shredded veggies, all you have to do is combine them with yogurt, lime juice, garlic, and seasonings. The slaw is spicy; if you want to make a milder coleslaw, use less jalapeño or omit the pepper entirely. If your pepper's heat snuck up on you and the slaw is too spicy (in-season jalapeños can be extra hot), add more yogurt and lime juice until the heat is manageable.

The yum yum is super simple: Just stir the ingredients together with a spatula until smooth. While tempting, don't omit the splash of water here: The water tones down the spice and tomato, leading to that soft and buttery yum yum flavor. Don't skip the melted butter, either — that's the secret ingredient that makes yum yum sauce so good.

Before dredging the chicken, heat the oil so that each piece can go directly into the pot instead of sitting in flour likely to dissolve. The benefit to a buttermilk brine is that you don't need any eggs to help the flour adhere to the chicken, so take the chicken directly out of the brine and dredge in the seasoned flour. Add the dredged chicken directly into the hot oil (and if it isn't ready, you can place them on a sheet tray for a few minutes, re-dredging if needed).

The chicken should sizzle and brown immediately in the oil, first changing color then slowly becoming crisp. Flip to brown both sides, and remove from the oil once both sides have a firm, crunchy texture, without any soggy breading.

With the chicken fried, the slaw mixed together, and the yum yum ready, you can build the sandwiches. Place the chicken on a bottom bun, add a spoonful of yum yum, and place a handful of slaw on top. Close the sandwich with the top bun and dig in — because these are hefty sliders, plan to serve 2 per person. If using these for a main course, plan to serve with filling sides like a broccoli and bacon salad, mac and cheese, or potato salad. It's likely you'll polish off the sliders in one sitting, but if you do have leftovers, save the chicken separately and reheat in the oven or air fryer to keep crisp. Store the slaw and yum yum in separate, airtight containers in the refrigerator and plan to build the sliders fresh the next time you serve them.