Almost ordered takeout last night, then I remembered I had chicken sitting in the fridge and figured I'd finally try making a Raising Canes chicken tenders copycat I'd been meaning to get to for a while. My kids have been asking to go to Cane's basically every week and I just cannot justify the drive plus the cost every single time, so this felt like the right moment. I was a little skeptical honestly, mostly about the sauce because that Canes dipping sauce is kind of the whole thing and I wasn't sure a homemade version could actually hold up. Wrote down everything I did here in case anyone wants to follow along: [https://www.amgroyal.com/raising-canes-chicken-tenders-copycat](https://www.amgroyal.com/raising-canes-chicken-tenders-copycat)  
  
Here's what I used:  
  
Chicken tenders  
  
4 chicken breasts or 2lbs tenderloins  
1 1/2 cups buttermilk  
3 tablespoons Cajun seasoning, divided  
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour  
  
For the Cane's Sauce  
  
3/4 cup mayonnaise  
1/3 cup ketchup  
1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce  
1 teaspoon ground black pepper  
1 teaspoon garlic powder  
  
Here's how it went:  
  
1. Mixed all the sauce ingredients together first, covered the bowl with plastic wrap, and stuck it in the fridge. This part takes like two minutes and it needs time to sit anyway so just do it right at the start.  
  
2. Cut the chicken breasts into three vertical strips each. If you're using tenderloins, slide them through a fork to get the tendons out. Takes a little patience but worth doing.  
  
3. Combined the buttermilk with half the Cajun seasoning in a zip bag, tossed in the chicken, sealed it up, and let it marinate in the fridge for about an hour. If you can go overnight, apparently even better but I didn't plan that far ahead.  
  
4. Mixed the flour with the remaining Cajun seasoning in a shallow dish. Pulled the chicken strips out of the bag and pressed them into the flour, keeping as much of that buttermilk coating on them as possible because that's what gives you the crispy flakes. Really pressed it in with my hands.  
  
5. Filled a heavy pot with oil about halfway, heated it to 350F, and fried the strips in batches of three or four, about four minutes per side. Put them on a wire rack after to drain.  
  
6. While the chicken was frying I threw some crinkle cut fries in the air fryer and popped some garlic Texas toast in the oven. Served everything together with that sauce.  
  
A few things I noticed:  
  
The marinating time genuinely matters. I only did an hour and the chicken was still really tender and juicy, but I think overnight would probably take it up another level. Fair warning, don't rush this part if you can help it.  
  
Keeping the buttermilk on the chicken when you coat it sounds obvious but I almost wiped it off by accident the first strip. Those little clumps in the flour are what turn into the really good crunchy bits.  
  
The sauce was honestly way closer to the real thing than I expected. My husband did a little side by side comparison with some leftover Cane's sauce we had from a previous order and said they were pretty much the same. That was a nice surprise.  
  
Leftovers reheated fine in the air fryer the next day, about five minutes at 375 and they were still crispy. I was genuinely shocked because I figured they'd be soggy.  
  
This turned into a really solid family dinner and one of the better weeknight dinner wins I've had in a while. The whole thing including fries and toast felt way more satisfying than just ordering out, and the crispy chicken tenders were gone faster than I expected.  
  
Anyone else made a copycat like this and found something specific that made the coating come out better?

Raising Canes Chicken Tenders Copycat Easy Weeknight Dinner