How to make a Chick-fil-A at home

Chick-fil-A is removing high-fructose corn syrup from its white buns and artificial dyes from its sauces and dressings. (AP)

For better or worse, we've been hearing a lot about Chick-fil-A these days.  No matter where you come down on gay marriage, the Atlanta-based fast food chain does make a darn good chicken sandwich.

The folks at Serious Eats went into their test kitchen to try and make Chick-fil-A's signature chicken sandwich at home.  The good news is that it's fairly simple: it's just about getting the chicken seasoning just right.

Here's what you're going to need:

1. Bun: Arnold Hamburger Rolls.  You need a bun that is soft and slightly sweet, like Wonderbread.

2. Pickles: Vlasic Ovals Hamburger Dill Chips, which have a larger surface area and the same salty-vinegary-garlicky flavor.

3. Chicken breasts: Chick-fil-A uses an entire chicken breast half for their creations, but Serious Eates notes that you'll have to cut your standard (massive) 8-ounce supermarket chicken breasts in half horizontally to get it right size.

4. Seasoning: Turns out the seasoned flour mix to dredge your chicken breast before deep-frying, is not exactly a state secret.  Chick-fil-A lists their ingredients on their website. But the hard part is recreating the "spices" part.  After a little of this and less of that, Serious Eats found the perfect combination that gets it close to that sweet-salty-savory-hot balance: Salt, sugar, MSG, black pepper, cayenne, and paprika.

5. Milk wash: This is pretty much your standard egg and milk.

6. Peanut oil for frying.

If you're a stickler for getting it just right, you may have to buy yourself a pressure fryer.