Alton Brown Makes Fried Chicken | Food Network

[Music] after a night soak the acid and sugars in the buttermilk have actually invaded the chicken meat which is going to give it a nice tangy flavor now the buttermilk itself has formed a kind of thick batter that's what viscosity buys you you can't pull that off with regular milk this is a poultry shake and everybody ought to have one my shake is two tablespoons each kosher salt and hungarian paprika two teaspoons of garlic powder and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper i just spin said shake with a buck 50 pizzeria shaker by the way to keep this fresh in between shakings a piece of wax paper under the cap does the job just don't forget to take it out before you shake now liberal seasoning is advised not only are you seasoning the meat but the crust that will soon be forming on top so go for the gusto now a quick dredge and all-purpose flour now you could augment this with anything from cornmeal to corn flakes but this is tradition for a reason it's good now a lot of cooks would season this flour but i don't like to do that i've got two good reasons one you waste a lot of seasonings and two spices like paprika burn by stashing them under the crust they'll be protected now this may be the most important point you want to get as much of the extra dredge off as possible any excess will fall off in the pan and burn that's not good eats a lot of recipes including this one recommend a post edge rest period to let the coating set but i don't give it more than a couple of minutes because set is exactly what this cousin of library paste will do i can see by the little wisps of smoke starting to form on the surface of the shortening this is ready to go and indeed the thermometer confirms temperature of 352 degrees now remember it's got a low smoke point and about 360 it's going to start smoking heavily and that means that it's chemically breaking down and that's going to smell bad and it's going to taste bad so we've got to get this stuff in the pan but we can't just chuck it in willy-nilly i mean cast iron is a righteous conductor but there's still going to be a hot spot right here right in the center never the burner is but we can take advantage of this here's how take the faster cooking pieces the breasts we're going to put them skin side down at ten o'clock and two o'clock away from the hottest part of the pan now the drumsticks take a long time to cook but they're small so we'll put them at seven o'clock and five o'clock that's going to leave the hottest part right here in the center available for the longest cooking pieces the thighs put them down right in the middle so they're not touching anything you want to cook this until it's golden brown and delicious on side a and you see a lot of moisture pushing up on side b it's going to take about 12 minutes depending on the size of the pieces 12 minutes is up and all looks well first we have tail tail little pools of moisture here some of that's probably accumulated steam but most of it pushed up from inside the meat then of course we've got the golden brown crust with the nice little dark areas that's from sitting on the bottom of the pan that stuff tastes good so roll everything right where it is now since we're about to introduce a whole new cold surface to the oil we're going to get a little bit of a temperature drop so before we leave we're going to turn the heat up again to medium high just for a few minutes to help compensate remember the pans holding on to a huge amount of heat so it's going to do most of the work for you check in a couple of minutes by the way this little baby here is the best 15 you will ever spend unless cleaning every horizontal surface in the kitchen sounds fun doesn't mean well another 12 minutes of rush by here in tv land and if we've controlled our fat temperature properly side b should be just a little bit darker than side a that's because there's more stuff floating around in the shorting on the second pass most importantly the inside should be done only one way to know for sure 183 fine i usually don't advocate taking dark meat beyond 175 or light meat beyond 165 but i find that another 10 degrees makes a big difference in how the crust adheres to the meat post pan and since fried chicken must try some more yes must be eaten with the fingers slightly firmer meat will be a plus now let's review shall we for perfect pan fried chicken start with a broiler fryer cut it up yourself soak it overnight in low fat buttermilk then drain it season it liberally with a shake of your own design then dredge it an all-purpose flour and fry it in a cast iron skillet containing a mere third of an inch of shortening maintained in an average temperature of 325 degrees turn it one time and one time only then drain it and eat it i might add that there is no bad time for fried chicken

Channel: Food Network

Views: 1,777,500

Keywords: cooking, techniques, fried, fried chicken, how to, how to make fried chicken, alton brown, good eats, food network, chicken recipes, the best fried chicken, alton brown recipes, fried chicken recipes, food, fn

Id: 0X2I4eZimTw

Length: 5min 3sec (303 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2009