Sunday 8 December 2013

Absolute Best Fried Chicken!!

Best Fried Chicken


Seriously, Look at this chicken! That is some good fried chicken


Ingredients:

  • 1 Whole chicken, butchered into 10 parts, bone in

Dry Coating:

  • 3 Cups Flour
  • 2 Tablespoons Garlic Powder
  • 1 Tablespoon Salt
  • 3-4 Tablespoons Pepper
  • 2 Tablespoons Paprika
  • 2 Tablespoons Poultry Seasoning
  • 1 Tablespoon Celery Salt
  • 2 Tablespoons dry Mustard
  • 2 Teaspoons Ground Ginger
  • 1 Tablespoon Thyme
  • 1 Tablespoon Dried Basil
  • 1 Tablespoon Dried Oregano

Wet batter:

  • 1 1/3 Cup Flour
  • 2 Teaspoons Salt
  • 2-3 Tablespoons Pepper
  • 1 Tablespoons Paprika
  • 1 Egg
  • About 1 1/2 Cups cold beer to upwards of one bottle of beer

Instructions:

  1. Prepare the chicken pieces and the brine. Brine the chicken, if desired. 
  2. Remove after about 1 hour and let dry on a platter for about 10 minutes.
  3. Heat deep fryer to 350°F
  4. In one medium bowl whisk together all the ingredients for the dry mixture, set aside.
  5. In another medium bowl measure out the flour, salt, pepper, and paprika. Whisk together. 
  6. Add the egg and 1 1/2 cups of beer. 
  7. Whisk together until pretty smooth and the batter is about as thick as pancake batter. 
  8. If the batter is too thick add a little bit more beer, if too runny add a bit more flour or corn starch. 
  9.  Working with a few pieces at a time, dredge the chicken pieces in the dry mixture and then dip in the wet mixture. Coating all on sides.
  10. To have a double coating, fry after dipping in the wet batter. To have a triple coating, after dipping in the wet mixture, dredge in the dry mix again, then fry.
  11. Fry the chicken in the deep fryer for between 15-20 minutes, depending on how large or thick the piece is.
  12. Once cooked, remove from fryer and let stand on paper towels for several minutes before serving.
  13. Repeat process with all the pieces until they are all cooked.

Enjoy!

Notes:

After many attempts at trying to make the best fried chicken, I think I can finally say I made the best fried that I have ever eaten last night. It was truly one of the best things I have ever made I think. But it did take a bit of work to get it done right.

So I like my fried chicken to have a thick, crunchy batter, that is still light and easy to eat. I also like one with a lot of flavor and I found most of the recipes I found to have way too few spices, nor not enough spice amounts to really notice. So I tried to keep better track of how much of spices I actually use and sometimes it was seriously five times more than the original recipe called for. So this is a flavorful batter now.

The original recipes I am working with came from my grandmothers kitchen, allrecipes.com triple coated chicken, and my own imagination. The triple coating might be a little bit excessive to some people but don't worry, if you only do two coatings starting with the dry and finishing with the wet everything will still be delicious. Double or triple coating is up to you.

Also I highly recommend using a brine before frying the chicken. I did a simple brine with about an inch of diced fresh ginger, a tablespoon of pepper corns, some bay leaves, a diced shallot, and 1/3 cup each of salt and sugar. Add all that to a large stainless steel bowl, add the chicken pieces you wish to fry, (I cut up a whole fresh chicken into 10 parts, wings, thigh, leg, back breast, front breast) and fill the bowl with cold water, stir to dissolve the salt and sugar. Let stand for about 1 hour.

Ps. I went all out and served this with taters, and while the chicken was in the brine, I used the parts of the chicken I wasn't going to fry to make a little chicken stock and then made gravy! We had a pretty awesome supper here last night, can't lie. Fried chicken, taters and gravy is a recipe to make me pretty happy.

Ok, I also remembered that not everyone always has a few beers kicking around in the fridge, so if you by chance are fresh out of beer and not in the mood to buy more you can substitute water for the beer. But I would also add about 1-2 Teaspoons of baking powder to the wet mixture to balance out the lack of rise from the carbonation in the beer. Baking powder will also help the batter get crunchy in a good way.

Maple Brine Recipe
Quick Brine Recipe

Seriously, use a brine. It makes life better.

PSS. July 2014, When it is hot out and you are feeling a touch lazy, you can always just make up the dry coating, dredge the chicken pieces once, and then add about 1-2 cups beer or water and the egg to the remaining dry mix and whisk well to make the wet batter. This saves you making up multiple batters and speeds the process up a bit. I just served dinner to my best friend and her mom and used this lazy shortcut and everything still worked out quite well. Plus my mom and her mom munched on the crunchy burned bits of batter left over. When people want to eat the burnt crumbs and little bits of something you made, you know you must have done something right.

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