I made Ina Garten's fried-chicken sandwiches. They were fantastic — and the air fryer made the leftovers a hit, too.

I'm a big fan of fried-chicken sandwiches. But because I can easily order them when I'm at a restaurant or fast-food chain, I rarely make them at home.I set out to change that recently when I came upon a promising recipe for fried-chicken sandwiches from Ina Garten.Garten's "Barefoot Contessa" books make up roughly half of my household's cookbook collection, and I know her as a trustworthy source of tasty and easy-to-follow — if not necessarily easy-to-make — recipes.The photo of Garten's fried-chicken sandwiches make them look fairly simple, but the recipe — originally from her 2018 cookbook, "Cook Like a Pro" — calls for a multi-stage, multi-day process and a fairly vast list of ingredients.Here's how making them went.

First, I gathered the ingredients for the marinade.

The marinade called for buttermilk, a jalapeño, a shallot, two cloves of garlic, salt, and pepper.

Ted Berg

The first step was making a marinade — made of buttermilk, a jalapeño, a shallot, two cloves of garlic, and salt and pepper — for the chicken breasts.This step was simple, as nothing was more difficult than smashing the garlic or slicing the shallots.