How do you like your chicken?
Chicken gets a bad rap for being overexposed. But for easy, healthy dinners, it’s hard to beat.
Come summer time, things get tricky. Roasting a chicken is out of the question because cranking your oven for two hours when it’s 40 degrees outside is punishing.
As for grilling, all the amazing looking chicken recipes on flood blogs this time of the year are grilled (which is annoying if you don’t own a grill, btw).
The best option? Fried chicken!
It’s crispy and flavorful on the outside, moist and juicy on the inside.
Preparation techniques and the right spice mix can make the difference between good and great fried chicken.
So we narrowed down tips in the hopes of achieving fried chicken perfection.
Start with a brine—preferably one with a buttermilk base.
For perfect golden-crusted fried chicken, start by mixing your chicken in a buttermilk brine and refrigerate it for 12 hours.
Don’t have buttermilk? Brine it in saltwater.
For Jon Buck, an executive chef of Husk Greenville, explained that a saltwater brine both tenderizes and increases the natural flavor of the chicken through a gently controlled salinity.
Let the chicken sit in its flour coating for MUCH longer than you’d think.
After brining, the next important step is to allow the chicken to sit in seasoned flour for 12 hours, allowing the flour to become hydrated by the chicken. This, in turn, creates the perfect crust.
The chicken is then dipped in a final dusting of seasoned flour before frying.
Fry low and slow to make sure the chicken cooks through.
When making fried chicken, you want to cook at a high enough enough temperature that the outside crisps up, but not too quickly, as raw chicken and burnt skins are both no-gos. Fry the chicken for about 2-3 minutes just to get that fat chicken breasts cooked to perfection.
After getting that golden brown,
Finish with a drizzling of additional fats.
Go big or go home, right?
You can use canola oil for frying, but a pro tip is to use the˜five fats’ (bacon, pork, ham, chicken, and butter) as a drizzle on the chicken after it’s been fried.
These may not be always readily available for the home cook, but using only bacon fat drizzled over the finished fried chicken will get you close to the flavor you’re looking for, giving you more reason to save your bacon grease.
Now you’re hungry, right?
Experience chicken overload with Ayala Center Cebu’s Chicken Day this September 20.
Enjoy Get 1, take 1 deal on the best chicken restaurants in Ayala at Adobo Connections, Italianni’s, Jones, TGIFridays, New Orleans, Chikaan, Brique, and Big Mao.
See you there chicken lovers!