Lucky Blue and Nara Smith Make a Crispy Chicken Sandwich—and Several Confessions—for Vogue

Hi, Vogue- You gotta restart.

You go and.

[screen beeping]

We re here making my hot honey crispy chicken.

[screen beeping] No, let s do it one more time.

[screen beeping]

What s up, Vogue? It s Nara Smith.

I m Lucky Blue Smith.

And today we re making my crispy chicken sandwich.

[upbeat music]

We re gonna start with making our rosemary mint lemonade.

I always let Lucky juice the lemons or citrus

because I m just not strong enough.

We just don t have any of these at home.

No.

Which is shocking. We do.

Nara doesn t have this at home.

No, I do.

I have two, but I m too lazy to use them.

You re better at just squeezing it by hand.

Does this go this way or this way?

Seems like this way. Other side.

No, cause the juice is coming out front here.

Oh, look at that.

So today we re gonna use lemons, water, ice,

we made a simple syrup with water and sugar

and then we re gonna add mint and rosemary.

I love adding rosemary to almost anything.

[Lucky] I m really focused on these lemons right now.

You re doing really good, honey.

I know, I m crushing it.

[Nara] Now let s add all the herbs.

Just, like, throw em in there.

This one seems nice.

The whole stick. Yeah.

All right.

Add the ice and then we ll do simple syrup and water.

We actually don t have a garden at home.

We just bought a house.

So hopefully next spring we ll get around to doing that.

We re gonna add a third of this simple syrup.

Cooking is all about eyeballing things.

Wow.

Sorry, I just had to, you know-

You re feeling risky today.

And then we re just gonna fill it up with water.

Don t be annoying.

Okay, the tricky thing is now,

that I didn t think about,

is pouring this without all the ice splattering everywhere.

Fun fact, when Nara s filming her videos,

the entire side of the kitchen

that s out of frame is full of dishes,

crusted dough that I have to soak for five hours.

Guess who cleans that up?

You. And I m so grateful.

Let me add an ice cube to each of the these.

Add a mint leaf too.

Wow.

You see? Now we re cooking.

Let s try this.

This is amazing.

Okay, so me personally- You would add even more?

I m gonna add this to dash.

It s just a dash.

I like how sour it is, but let me try yours actually.

There you go.

That made no difference whatsoever.

We re gonna start on our burger buns.

We re gonna have our yeast mixture,

which is water and yeast

and then we re gonna make a flour paste.

So that s whole milk, water and some bread flour.

We re gonna put that in the pot

and then for the other ingredients for the buns,

we have salt, sugar, egg and butter.

So we re gonna bloom our yeast,

eat up some milk to 110 and Lucky s gonna do that for me.

I love it. Your mom s a baker.

You re a baker.

So I feel like- I just bake cookies.

That s all I do.

He makes the best chocolate chip cookies.

Put this in now. No, no, no, no, no.

Get your thermometer.

Oh, we went over 110.

Just put the yeast in now

and then we re just gonna set it aside to bloom.

What are we doing for this?

So we re basically just gonna put milk, water

and flour in here

and then we re just gonna stir it to combine

until it s a paste.

This goes really quick, so just keep an eye on it.

I don t want it brown. I just want it to come together.

Got it. You re such a chef.

I love it.

The paste came together.

Now we re gonna make our dough.

We re gonna start with the bread flour, sugar.

What s your favorite thing I make for you, honey?

Cause I make so many things.

We just had a baby a year ago.

He told me he would cook for me and really just-

Which I did.

I feel like I did.

One day I wake up from my nap at, like, 4:00

to the smell of intense burning and it s smoky in the house

and he comes up and he s like,

Honey, I, I.

Did you ask me for help

or did you just bring me my burnt food?

I blocked this entire situation out of my mind.

I don t remember what you re talking about.

The smoke alarm went off.

The baby woke up.

Right, it s coming back to me now.

Okay. Give that a really slight mix.

On level- Just the lowest one.

Yeah. Oh.

[Nora laughing]

I m getting ahead of myself, honestly.

We re gonna turn it off and then open it up.

It s a nice looking paste, I ll tell you.

Good job.

And then turn it on on low. Low.

And then you slowly pour the yeast mixture in

while that s going.

Okay, now you do the eggs.

Maybe we ll turn it up a little bit.

This is looking marvelous.

Just not everything at once, just-

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One at a time.

When I actually was doing sourdough

and I had my little starter going,

you were the one doing stretch and folds

cause I was out and about and I d call you and be like,

Every 30 minutes, do the little.

Yeah, that was stressful.

Before you left, you were like,

Honey, you have to do this every 30 minutes on the dot.

I love that that s your recollection of it

cause mine was like,

Hey, honey, just set a tongue where every 30 minutes.

If it works out, great. If it doesn t, great.

No, no, no, no.

Okay, perfect.

Once your dough is not sticking

to the sides of the bowl anymore,

it might take a second because of the butter,

you can turn it off and put it in a lightly greased bowl.

I like greasing my bowl with neutral cooking oil.

So any vegetable oil.

But I use algae oil just because it s non-inflammatory

and I struggle with really bad eczema.

I also use this to deep fry our chicken later.

Forgive me for going in this with my hands,

but they re washed.

Place it in your bowl,

then you cover it with your tea towel

and let it rise for an hour to an hour and a half.

Where do we put this? Over there.

Amazing.

It s been an hour and a half.

Our dough has doubled its size.

It s supposed to be doing double.

We re gonna portion this out into six.

Roll them up, put them on our baking sheet to proof

and let them rise for another little bit.

What s been your favorite look you ve worn,

either in your videos or at fashion week?

What s been your favorite one?

If I had to say right now,

it would be the recent Paris Fashion Week

when I went to the Capparelli show,

it was a beautiful sequin mini dress

and no one s ever worn it before me

and Daniel was kind of holding off on people wearing it,

but he let me wear it, which felt so special.

Oh, you did that so quick. I did it.

Then we fold them under

and then you kind of just form them into a little ball.

We re gonna place our buns onto our tray.

We re gonna set these aside now to proof.

These have doubled in the size now.

So we re gonna brush the some egg wash

and pop them in the ovens.

Yeah. Okay. There we go.

You re doing amazing. Just make sure to get all the sides

cause whatever you re brushing

is gonna turn golden brown and glossy.

My style used to be very, like, street style and masculine

and then when I met lucky he was like,

Do you like wearing dresses?

Cause we lived in California and I was like,

No, a dress?

You ll never catch me dead in a dress.

And then here we are five years later

where everything I wear is a dress now.

Does it need to get fixed? No. Just right here.

This is my angle though. Oh.

Oh, there s one.

There s a spot right next to me.

We re gonna bake these until they re golden brown

and then we re gonna be back.

Okay, we re gonna brine our chicken right now.

So we ve got chicken thighs,

I prefer over breast just cause they re juicier,

and then we have pickle juice, buttermilk,

garlic, salt, egg, Frank s Red Hot and some pepper.

Pickle juice. Funny story actually.

Lucky is obsessed with drinking pickle juice.

It has to be very specific pickle juice though.

Have to admit, it s true.

Has to be the Grillo pickle juice.

I remember one night walking in on him

in the kitchen and it was dark,

the fridge was the only light in the whole kitchen

and he was just standing there

with a container of pickle juice.

Hey. Like it was nothing.

You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.

There s no shame in it. Half a teaspoon.

Yeah. Wait, tell them-

Just this whole thing in right?

Yeah, just the cove of garlic and then some pepper.

How much pepper? Just eyeball it.

You tell me.

Yeah, that seems about right.

That s a lot of pepper. That seems about it.

Okay, tell them about your hot sauce obsession.

Pretty much all there is, I just love hot sauce.

I put on everything.

No, Lucky, has to have hot sauce with every single meal.

If there s no hot sauce in the house,

he will not have the meal.

He would much rather skip the meal if there s no hot sauce.

It s true.

You re wearing white. It s stressing me out.

If you love hot sauce and you go to Europe,

they don t have hot sauces like they do in America.

They have Tabasco. Yes, they have Tabasco.

So that s what you re gonna have to deal with.

We re gonna let this sit for about four hours

and then we re gonna come back to it and bread it.

Just a little bit more hot sauce.

[Nara] We re back.

[Lucky] What are we doing in this stuff?

[Nara] We re gonna batter our chicken

and then we re gonna fry it.

All-purpose flour, mochiko flour and corn starch

and what else?

Paprika, onion powder, garlic powder,

kosher salt and baking cup.

Love it.

And then this is some of the brine

that we had the chicken in before.

So we re gonna really get it in there.

Like, you really want it to coat the chicken

and then you pick it up, kind of dust it off,

put it into the brine, get it on both sides.

Really just giving your chicken like a tender hug.

You know?

A tender hug? [Nora laughing]

Yes. Okay.

And then- Then back in that, right?

Yep.

You want the little dips, not dips, the little drips.

Usually I do this with my hands

and I have a dry hand and a wet hand

cause you don t wanna batter your fingers,

but this works as well.

Good job.

[Lucky] Oh, yeah, I m just taking over it.

So basically in order to get you to cook at home,

I just need to make it fun.

Yeah, make it, like, art class inspired.

You know?

We ve battered our chicken,

AKA, Lucky battered our chicken,

and we re gonna go deep fry this now.

We re heating up the oil to 350.

You d be on top. Yep. Yep.

[Nora] I know that you re gonna take this very serious.

I am. This is important.

Lucky gets really dialed in.

If he has a task, he s going to do it really well.

Tell them how we met.

Long story short. Yes.

I messaged her on Instagram.

We started texting a little bit.

He s a crappy texter by the way.

I was very slow at texting.

I wouldn t say I m crappy, I m very slow.

I d like to take my time with what I wanna say.

You know? Five business days.

I think one day you were over the texting,

I kind of realized that I was taking too long

and we just got on a call, right?

Yeah, and that call was seven hours

and then ever since that call

we were on the phone every single day.

There hasn t been a day ever since that day

that we ve actually not been talking.

That s true.

We re gonna gently drop in our chicken.

We re gonna do three pieces at a time.

I don t wanna overcrowd the pan.

That smells so good. Yeah.

I don t wanna splash oil on this.

That s fine. I got this.

Yeah, you go.

What s your favorite date night we ve ever had?

Do you remember when we had like a movie night

in the trunk at the [indistinct] in our car?

We were in Malibu actually

and we just went into the Malibu Hills

and found a good spot to kind of pull over and do it.

But that was really fun.

I enjoyed that.

Let s pull this cause I m impatient and I wanna eat.

We can do those later.

There you go.

While they re hot,

I m just gonna get some salt on them.

Yes. Okay. Amazing.

So now that these are out of the pot, sprinkled with salt,

we re going to glaze them with a hot honey glaze.

We have all of our ingredients laid out.

So we have our buns, we made some aioli, pickles,

iceberg lettuce and some red onion.

For the glaze, we did-

Frank s hot and gochujang. Yes.

Then what else?

Frying oil, garlic, honey, salt.

You can glaze it with a brush.

I like it cause it feels like painting,

but you can also just dip your chicken into the glaze

if you want it just like really soaked.

Lucky s gonna have two.

He s probably gonna have more later.

Hey, do you wanna cut our buns?

Yes.

I struggle cutting bread in straight lines.

I don t know what it is.

I usually have a bread machine, but I let Lucky do it.

[Lucky] All right, how are you gonna plate it up?

We go in with aioli first.

I like a lot of onions.

I m gonna do mine first because I started with the aioli.

Put our chicken on top.

Wow. That looks insane.

I m gonna brush it with just a smidge more of the glaze.

Okay, and in my opinion,

the secret to a good sandwich is having multiple textures

and flavor profiles.

Oh, I should have put the pickles down first,

but I m just gonna put them on top.

Don t do this at home.

Put them down first

and then we re gonna put our bun on top.

There go.

We re gonna make Lucky s now, we re gonna be right back.

Well, we re still gonna be here, but.

We need to go to bed earlier.

Keep going to bed at, like, what? 2:00 AM.

It s bad, honey.

Once the kids are in bed, it s like me time, right?

No, I get that.

And so I don t want to have to

go to bed early and then wake up

and have, you know, crying and fussing start.

So it s like procrastination, you know?

It is.

What s this? Aioli.

Aioli.

No.

Stay far from me. I think you need it, but.

No, no, no, no, no.

Load it up with onions.

There you go.

So I usually plate it the way I think he would enjoy it

and the way I kind of wanted to cook it.

Yes. And then for seconds,

thirds and fourths, he can kind of just go ham.

I like a good amount of lettuce.

Lucky does like three leaves.

It s than three leaves.

[Nora] Oh, wow.

You guys see this action right here?

Cheers.

I need like.

More hot sauce. Cause I like to dip.

I ll just do a little dip action.

Yeah. Okay.

Yes.

This bite.

Are you proud of it? Wow.

It s amazing and with the lemonade.

Oh, and lemonade.

10 out of 10. What do you rate it out of 10?

Lucky s really harsh with his food.

A solid 7.9.

That s good.

That s a solid rating. What would ve made it a 10?

No, no, no.

It s not the recipe, it s the dish.

Got it.

You know, I m more of like a steak guy.

Yeah, that s what I m saying about [indistinct].

This is actually stunning though.

It is very good.

Thank you, Vogue.

We re gonna go enjoy our food now

and we ll see you next time.

Bye.

[upbeat jazzy music]