mchorton’s blog

After a few attempts of making fried chicken, I landed in a procedure I liked. I codify it here, for my future self and for others. I will never forget that day, 9/4/2020, when I tasted the chicken made by this precise recipe.

Ingredients:

Saucy Part:

• 1 pint 2.5% reduced fat buttermilk (they didn’t have regular at the store. It’s probably better to use regular, but I’m sure it’ll affect things like the thickness/stickiness of the batter. So I’m writing this recipe to reflect what I made on 9/4.)
• 2 eggs
• ~2 tbsp your favorite hot sauce
• Mix them all together into 1 big saucyboi. You might need to make more (depending on whether you double coat, etc.), but this should be roughly enough.

Powdery Part:

• 100g flour
• 5-10g black pepper
• ~2-2.5g Tony’s Salty Powdery Stuff
• A few grams of other spices you like, e.g.:
  • 5g onion powder
  • 5g garlic powder
  • 1-2g cayenne powder
• Mix it all together into one big powder. You might need to make more depending on how much chicken you make, whether you double-coat, etc. Probably for 3lb of chicken, you’ll need ~300g of powder.

Chickeny Part:

• ~3 lb of chicken, cut into strips. I usually use breasts, and cut them crosswise (e.g. against the grain) into strips ~.75in thick. (However big Brooklyn cut them on 9/4 was perfect.)

Oily Part:

• ~1 qt of peanut oil (or canola or whatever)

Directions:

Put the Oily Part into a pot, enough to make the oil deep enough that the chicken strips will be fully submerged (~1.5 inches). Heat to 365F.

Dunk a strip of chicken into the Saucy Part, and remove it. Shake it lightly for 2 seconds to remove excess. Then hurl it into the Powdery Part. Be sure to push firmly to help the coating stick, and roll it around real good, tossing powder over it and pressing the powder into the chicken firmly. Remove the strip and place on a cutting board. Repeat this for the next ~10 strips. Once you’ve done about 10 of them, you can repeat the process to add a second coating. (Strongly recommend a second coating if the batter is thin, e.g. if you used the reduced fat buttermilk. But if the coating seems thick enough, you can skip the second coating).

Put the first batch of chicken into the hot oil. It should violently bubble right away. If not, something went horribly wrong. You can put a few strips in, but make sure they aren’t touching or too close together, or they won’t be as crispy. You can continue dunkin’ other chicken strips in the saucy/powdery parts while waiting for them to cook.

Flip the frying strips after a few minutes. I don’t have an exact time, but the coating should be very lightly browning when you flip. Leave it in for another couple minutes, then pull out of the oil, shake dry, then place on a paper towel. Flip it over onto a fresh patch of dry paper towel after another 2 minutes. It’s really important that there isn’t excess oil, or it’ll get soggy.

When you remove the chicken, the coating should be lightish brown, roughly “golden” or a bit lighter. If you wait for it to get too dark (e.g. golden++, working towards brown), the coating might still be crispy/tasty, but the inside might start to dry out. Sometimes (esp. with thicker pieces), the center might not be done cooking when the outside is crisp and golden. Wait a few minutes to account for carryover cooking, then cut into the center and check. If it needs more time, you can just wait a few minutes (maybe 10 min, for the steam in the chicken to dissipate), then leave it in the oven (~250F) for a few minutes. I usually like to slightly undercook the first batch or two, then put it in the oven at low temp (~250F) about 15 minutes before serving, to make sure it’s hot when it’s eaten. You can always compensate for undercooking, but you can’t de-cook chicken that was fried for too long. Word of caution, if you put too much hot steamy chicken in the oven, it might get too steamy and the coating will get soggy. So leave it to cool on the paper towels for at least a little while (~10 minutes) before it can go in the oven, so it’s not as steamy. Consider checking the oven to see if it’s humid, and consider ventilating the oven by leaving the door open a bit.