Give Your Chicken Sandwich Extra Flavor With This Classic Southern-Style Topping

Usually, a green tomato is unfinished business, something you're waiting on to become what it really is. It hasn't developed the sweet softness or juicy flesh of its ripe, red future, but on a chicken sandwich, that's exactly what makes it useful and delicious. Unripe green tomatoes, as opposed to varieties that stay green when fully ripe, have firmer flesh and pronounced acidity. Against a rich and savory chunk of chicken with crispy breading and layered with creamy sauce, that tart green tomato offers a welcome vibrancy and enough structural integrity to hold its own between the bread.

Anyone who has grown tomatoes may already be familiar with the predicament that helped give green tomato cookery a practical purpose. Tomatoes don't necessarily finish ripening according to a gardener's schedule, and the end of the growing season often leaves plenty of green fruit on the vine as cold weather approaches. Since they don't have the same flavor or texture as ripe tomatoes, and can't be used 1:1 in other tomato-based recipes, cooks have found uses that work with what they do have going. Green tomatoes can be pickled, turned into the South's beloved bumper crop relish, chutney, salsa verde, or, famously, breaded and fried. You can even take things to a whole new level and fry pickled green tomatoes! That leaves you with more than one delicious way to incorporate them into a chicken sandwich. 

Slices of pickled green tomato are a perfect juxtaposition to a fried chicken sandwich's richness, supplying a crunchy, tangy counterpoint. But you're not limited to fried chicken sandwiches. With grilled or blackened chicken, a fried green tomato can be just what a sandwich needs, adding its own deep-fried goodness in addition to a firm, tart center. BBQ pulled chicken sliders could accommodate either treatment, and just about every type of sandwich would taste good with a sweet and savory condiment like green tomato chutney. The best version is less about one prescribed sandwich, and more about creating an interplay of contrasting textures and flavors, giving the chicken something it doesn't already have.

The firmness of a green tomato what makes many of these preparations possible. As tomatoes ripen, changes in their cell walls help soften the fruit, eventually producing the sweet, juicy flesh you want from a ripe summer tomato. Green tomatoes haven't progressed as far, leaving them sturdy enough to withstand more aggressive treatment. A thick (or thin) slice can spend time in a pickling liquid, or get breaded and fried, and keep its shape and bite to give you an identifiable piece of tomato even when layered and smushed into a chicken sandwich.

You can use fresh, raw green tomatoes too — it'll be the firmest, most vegetal version of the topping. As a nightshade, unripe tomatoes contain more of a glycoalkaloid called tomatine than ripe ones, and cooking doesn't neutralize it, but the amounts present aren't a concern in a normal serving size. Green tomatoes might not have been what anyone set out to grow, but their tartness and sturdy texture mean there's no reason to wait before putting them to good use in a hearty chicken sandwich.