The Hot Chicken Project

For acclaimed Australian chef Aaron Turner, hot chicken isn’t just food – it’s salvation in crispy, fried and devilishly spicy form. In The Hot Chicken Project, he travels back to Nashville, the place of its birth, to pay his respects to the makers, to chart the love and obsession that has shaped his world, and to make sure that what he does back home is doing it justice. Part cookbook, part pilgrimage, The Hot Chicken Project is both an epic love letter to the fiery bird and a celebration of a way of life that is in danger of vanishing forever.

The Hot Chicken Project is part recipe book (40 recipes covering the best mains, sandwiches, sides, salads and sauces), part narrative, part pictorial celebration of the history and power hot chicken holds over the city of Nashville – and now beyond (including London!). 

It frames the stories of the people and families and communities who have cooked and eaten and appropriated it in Nashville over several generations. It offers a loud, opinionated take-no-prisoners perspective on food culture in the US (and beyond) today, as well as being an incomparable how-to manual for the VERY best hot chicken and accompaniments – wherever you are.