Once in a while… err, more often I should say, we crave for fried chicken. However, going to fast food places usually doesn’t cut it for us. They’re usually soggy, greasy or overly seasoned and salty. We thought we might as well find a recipe and try making it at home. I did say we crave for fried chicken more often, didn’t I?
There are lots of recipes out there but we found one from Cook’s Country that we really like so we’ll be sticking with it for a long time. Not only is the chicken moist and oh so tender, but most of all, the batter is properly seasoned, light and very crunchy.
Moist, tender and crunchy!
This recipe calls for 4 pounds of bone-in, skin on chicken pieces which is basically a whole chicken cut up into pieces (halve breasts crosswise and separate leg quarters into thighs and drumsticks). Make a brine by whisking in 1/4 cup of salt and 1/4 cup of sugar with 1 quart of cold water until dissolved. Place the chicken pieces in the brine and refrigerate for 30 minutes or up to 1 hour. This is a very important step so the meat will stay moist and tender.
Ingredients for the batter
As for the batter, mix the following ingredients in a large bowl until smooth. Then refrigerate the batter while the chicken is brining.
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornstarch
5 teaspoons pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cups cold water
Mix until smooth
After doing a bit of clean-up, start heating the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat to 350 degrees. Then remove the chicken from frige, pour off brine, and pat dry with paper towels.
Pat them dry
Rewhisk the batter and transfer half of chicken to batter. One piece at a time, remove chicken from batter (allowing excess to drip back into bowl) and transfer to oil. Then fry the chicken, adjusting the burner as necessary to maintain the oil temperature between 300 and 325 degrees, until deep golden brown and white meat registers 160 degrees (175 degrees for dark meat), about 12 to 15 minutes.
Just the right consistency
Drain the chicken on a wire rack set inside a rimmed baking sheet. Bring the oil back to 350 degrees and repeat with the remaining chicken. While cooking the rest of the chicken, we put the cooked ones in a 250-degree oven to keep them warm and stay crispy.
But it doesn’t end there.
Fries please!
We also made French fries to accompany the fried chicken. Makes sense, right? The oil is ready and hot anyway so might as well have fries (I know, any reason to have fries!). Here they are, nicely presented in a parchment paper lined mug.
Nice and golden brown
And voila! Nothing else required other than a side of mayo and ketchup.
Mmm... great combo!
Bon appétit!
Related Posts :
4 Comments
nice blog post Ernie! we should one cook together.
Thanks Ammneh! Hands down it’s one of the best fried chicken we’ve ever had. We could definitely meet up sometime to make this.
Looks amazing!
@uyen-chi
Thanks Uyen-chi! You have some amazing pictures of your food too.