Chef John’s 9 Best Fried Chicken Recipes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with nashville hot chicken that's right when i first heard about this stuff i thought it was some kind of internet hoax i was supposed to believe that they take crispy southern fried chicken and then before serving it they drench it with cayenne infused lard i mean that sounds totally made up and possibly illegal well as it turns out it's not made up and completely legal and one of the most amazing fried chicken dishes you will ever taste so i am very excited to show you my version and that's going to begin with what's basically a marinade so we're going to go ahead and add some buttermilk to a mixing bowl and by the way for the record in the original recipe this is just regular whole milk but i do prefer the buttermilk and then as you may have noticed from the intro picture this is always served with pickles which of course come in a brine and i'm going to add some of that brine right into this mixture followed by a very generous amount of hot sauce and that one people like to use on wings is very popular for this but i don't like that brand don't tell them they might be a sponsor so i'm going to toss in a less popular but what i think is a more delicious louisiana hot sauce and then last but not least we will crack in one large egg and then we'll take a whisk and mix that thoroughly and as soon as all that's been completely combined our marinade is done and ready for our chicken which as you can see here has been cut into the traditional eight pieces of course we have your two legs your two thighs a couple breasts and a pair of wings and i know i've showed you guys how to cut up a chicken before so i'll try to remember to add a link to the blog post but anyway we're gonna need one cut up chicken which ideally you've tossed with some salt the night before and left it in the fridge but i'm gonna be honest i didn't do that since this was kind of a last minute decision to film and as you'll see this is still gonna work out beautifully but if you can plan it out seasoning the night before is better and that is another issue i will explain in detail on the blog but either way what we'll do is go ahead and pour that marinade over our chicken and then take our tongs and make sure all that's mixed around very well okay chicken pieces are famous for their nooks and crannies so i'm editing this but take a minute or two and make sure all those pieces are thoroughly thoroughly coated then once that's been accomplished what we'll do is wrap this and transfer this into the fridge for two to four hours now can you do it last time yes can you do it more time sure but i only guarantee these same results if you do it two to four hours so we will pop that in the fridge and while we're waiting we can go ahead and do our seasoned flour which is super easy because all we're going to do is take some all-purpose flour and add in some fine salt and sure if you want you could use kosher but i much prefer the taste of the fine yes that was a joke at least to some people but anyway we're gonna add some salt to the flour and we'll give that a stir and in case you're wondering why we're not adding a bunch of other spices into this that's because we're going to be finishing this by brushing on that highly seasoned spicy sauce so we're just going flour salt here and then once that's prepped and assuming our chicken is marinated long enough we can go ahead and pull that out and start the dredging double dredging to be more exact so how i like to do this is to pull that chicken out of the marinade and sort of wipe off any excess and let it drip back into the bowl before placing that on some paper towels because what i want to do here sort of blot off that excess liquid and i'm doing that for two reasons since this is going to be double dredged meaning it's going to go in the flour twice i like to do that first application of flour without the chicken being too wet so we'll pull that chicken out of the marinade and sort of blot it off a little bit with the paper towels and then the other reason because we didn't do the overnight seasoning with the salt i'm gonna give these pieces a little extra seasoning with salt right here and at that point we can start the double dredging process so we will take our chicken pieces along with our reserve marinade oh don't throw that away we're to need that and we can start this double dredging as shown so we'll take a piece of chicken and toss it in our flour and we'll roll that around until it's completely coated and there are no wet spots to be seen and we'll go ahead and shake off the excess and pop that right back into our marinade and we'll kind of toss that around until it's coated and then let most of the excess drip off before returning it back to the flour for the second dredging and once that's been thoroughly and thoughtfully coated a second time we will transfer that to a rack and that's it okay so to summarize first we make it wet then we make it dry then we make it wet then we make it dry and that really is the key to nashville hot chicken perfection and speaking of keys we want to make sure we're using the old wet hand dry hand method okay see how i'm using my left hand just for the flower in my right hand just for the milk mixture that is definitely the recommended technique otherwise it's just super messy to work with i mean as it is it's already super messy but we don't want to make that worse by having our fingers all gunked up so using that old wet hand dry hand we'll continue on until all our chicken has been double dredged and then what we're going to do next which is a very underrated step is we're just going to let this sit out on the countertop for 15 minutes to sort of dry out a little bit all right that's going to give this time for that coating to kind of set up and i really think you do get better results and it really does help if you use a rack like i'm using here so we get some air circulation underneath but if you don't have a rack for whatever reason you could just crinkle up some foil that works too and then what we want to do during that 15 minutes is go ahead and make our sauce so into this pan i'm going to toss some butter and some lard i don't believe i've ever said that before and then to that we're gonna add a little touch of cayenne actually we're gonna add a whole spoon you know what make it two spoons and by the way if you think that's an insane amount of cayenne the actual original recipe is about three or four times that much so i'm gonna do this only with two tablespoons of cayenne and then we'll also do a little bit of garlic powder as well as some sweet paprika and speaking of sweet we want to do a little bit of brown sugar and a touch of salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper and once we have all that together what we'll do is place this over medium-high heat and all we need to do is cook this for a couple minutes stirring until those fats melt and everything gets heated through and sure this might look a little scary but don't be afraid the food gods hate a coward so have faith and if everything goes according to plan it should look something like this and once that's set we'll turn off the heat and just keep that on the back of the stove warm until we need it and assuming that our chicken has now sat out for 15 minutes we can go ahead and start frying and today we're going to be doing that in a cast iron skillet which will fill about a third of the way up with vegetable oil and heat to 350 and once our oils reach temperature we will carefully place in our chicken skin side down at least for the breasts and thighs legs and wings don't matter and of course once we add that in the temperature of the oil is going to drop but then it's going to come back up and what we're going to try to do is maintain a temperature of 325 which could mean you're just going to stay on medium-high heat but maybe not so that's going to be you cooking adjusting that temperature tweaking it a little bit up a little bit down and as far as the cooking time goes here it's going to be about 8 to 10 minutes per side but i guarantee nothing and you really should check with a thermometer and go to at least 160 internal temp and if you want feel free to turn this just once but that's not how i do it what i like to do is let the first side go for about six or seven minutes then i will go ahead and turn those over and i'll give that second side about six or seven minutes and then i'll turn it back over for another minute or two and then if it needs more time i might even turn it again and what i think happens with these additional turns is because some of that coding is above the surface it cools down a little when we turn that back over we get kind of a twice fried effect which is going to result in an unbelievably crispy crunchy chicken so that's how i do it and i have great results with that and if you're afraid it's going to absorb more oil that way don't be it really doesn't and even so did i mention we're going to brush this with lard so i'm not sure that's really going to be a problem and of course if you fried chicken before you know all the pieces aren't going to finish the same time so i pulled my wings out first because they finished first and then i continued on until everything was cooked perfectly and again to be safe you'll want to check with the thermometer we're shooting for at least an internal temp of 160. so once we've determined our chicken is cooked long enough we will remove that to a rack to drain and by the way in case you were wondering noah was not trying to be artistic with this shot where you blur the foreground and then focus on the background that's really more so me not knowing what i'm doing so at this point let me go ahead and distract you by grabbing a fork and letting you hear just how crispy this stuff comes out but as good as that sounds it tastes even better so let's go ahead and plate up and there's really only one acceptable way to do this and that's on top of sliced white bread okay the cheaper the better okay we want something that contains no fiber and even less nutrients so we'll place down our hot fried chicken on what technically qualifies as bread and then we will finish this up by generously brushing over our spicy sauce preferably to both sides and by the way down in nashville they literally dunk the pieces of chicken in like vats of this stuff so i'm sure there's a few people down from those parts that are laughing at me with my dainty brush so if you'd rather toss these pieces with the sauce or dip them in that's up to you you are the t-boned pickins of how to sauce your nashville hot chickens but anyway we're gonna generously apply our spiced butter lard mixture and then right here if i was a famous food photographer i could have left those drips but i'm not so i cleaned them up and then for a final touch we'll finish this off with some slices of bread and butter pickles we definitely want something on the sweet side here so we can balance the heat from the cayenne and that is it our nashville hot chicken is done and looking absolutely stunning so let me go ahead and grab this napkin in silverware and not use them and i'll go ahead and grab a leg and bite into what is probably the best fried chicken ever just insanely crispy that meat is moist and flavorful thanks to that spicy buttermilk marinade and then permeating everything we have that cayenne and spice infused butter and lard that is just an absolutely incredible bite of food and because i was in a hurry and only brushed sauce on one side of the chicken i'm gonna stop and brush on a little more and i believe in the business this is called we're larding but anyway that's it my take on nashville hot chicken normally i would have filmed eating the rest of that piece and probably one or two more pieces but this video is already way too long so i'm going to stop right here and finish off by saying i really really really hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy buttermilk fried chicken one of my favorite recipes of all time and not that hard to put together and just for fun i'm going to show you how i break down a whole chicken for fried chicken i'm gonna take off the wingtips those are useless i'm gonna d-joint the wings right where they attach to the body all right the thigh leg section comes off don't be afraid to snap and dislocate and then that gets cut between the drumstick and the thigh yes this is quick but go back and watch it you know seven or eight times you'll see so once the legs and thighs are done i'm left with basically the carcass which has the backbone and the breasts and you'll notice i'm using a nice heavy cleaver the ultimate tool for a chicken breakdown snap the backbone like that cut the breast in half and then each breast gets cut in two pieces alright you'll notice here when i cut the breast in half i slice down until i hit the bone and then i give it one pound with my hand so it goes through in one shot nice and clean otherwise you get like bone fragments so there's my four breast pieces my two thighs drumsticks and the two wings all right into the bowl it goes black pepper salt paprika dried herbs white pepper cayenne and that gets tossed all the believe it or not 11 herbs and spices will be on this site okay after that's well tossed with the spices and herbs you're gonna top it with buttermilk and we're gonna let that sit for six hours you can get away with four you can go overnight if you want but i like six hours all right then we're gonna make some seasoned flour which is just flour salt some paprika some cayenne some garlic powder some white pepper and some onion powder so give that a mix after the buttermilk marination the chicken pieces get dredged oh my god there's a fire truck going by hate when that happens the chicken gets dredged in that seasoned flour well there you want it really nicely coated give it a little shake off put on a plate and then we're ready to fry and what we're going to do and there's lots of different ways to fry this i'm going to take a dutch oven all right that's a big eight quart dutch oven and i have about two and a half quarts of oil in there and i'm gonna fry all eight pieces at once now some people like to fry in a skillet in just like an inch or two of oil and then they do it in batches and they turn it halfway through you know i don't have the patience i want it to all be done at the same time of course this uses twice the oil but you know what how often do you make fried chicken like once a year so at 350 i'm going to cook that for about 10 minutes it's going to develop a nice crust i'm going to go in after 10 minutes and just move it around a little just in case some pieces are stuck together i want to cook evenly that's going to go for about another 10 to 15 minutes so it's about 20 25 minutes total in the hot oil to cook all the way through now while that's finishing up i like to take a rack and put it on some paper towels on a sheet pan and that's what i'm going to use to drain the cooked chicken on all right so that's ready and the chicken's ready look at that unbelievably beautiful so again it's been about 20 to 25 minutes total in the oil i'm gonna fish it out with my spider that little strainer thing you see there and what beautiful chicken impossibly crispy amazingly delicious don't bite into it for about 10 minutes because it's so hot you won't enjoy it you just burn yourself so 10 minutes later we had a delicious plate of fried chicken and i just could not bring myself to eat this in front of you but trust me it was every bit as good as it looks that is not a hard recipe it does take a little bit of work but completely worth it so like i said 11 herbs and spices believe it or not are what was included in this you can go to the site count them yourself because all the ingredients are listed there and as always enjoy korean fried chicken sauce that's right not only is this an incredibly delicious sauce recipe video it's also a huge spoiler because now you totally know what's coming next and what's coming next is korean fried chicken probably the world's greatest fried chicken recipe and if you want to enjoy it in its full glory you're going to need to make this sauce the good news is it's super easy so first up we're going to dump some ketchup into a saucepan and are we using our homemade ketchup recipe of course not who has time to make ketchup i'm also going to throw in a big handful of chopped green onions along with a nice big spoon of finely minced garlic and then since this is basically a sweet and sour sauce we're going to sweeten this up a little bit with some honey so i'm going to put in a couple tablespoons of local honey because really why would you import honey and besides if the local bees find out you're not using their honey they will be more likely to sting you proven fact okay and then to the sweet we need some heat and i'm going to do that with a combination of red chili flakes and a little spoon of sambal which of course you know is a delicious ground chili sauce we use all the time and of course we're supposed to be using korean chili flakes and chili paste but you may not be able to find that and if not this easier to find combo will work perfectly but basically any kind of hot pepper is going to do the trick we're also going to season this up a little bit with a pinch of salt along with some freshly ground black pepper and then for the last official ingredients we're going to squeeze in the juice of one lemon a real lemon a fresh lemon from a tree and of course we need that acidity to balance the sweetness in the honey and the heat from those chilies so we'll squeeze that in and that's pretty much it we're going to give that a mix with the whisk and at this point i'll give my standard ethnic food disclaimer this is just my take on korean fried chicken sauce i think i put in a little more green onions and garlic than is usually called for and also i don't cook mine quite as long which reminds me that's the next step so all we're going to do is simmer this gently for about five minutes and to make that a little easier i'm going to splash in some water so the mixture does not get too thick as it cooks i'm going to set my heat to medium high and simply wait for this to start bubbling and as soon as it does we'll simply lower our heat a little bit maybe medium low to maintain a nice gentle simmer alright just nice little bubbles maybe one step past the don ho stage you know every once in a while i do enjoy throwing in a reference that grandma will like but anyway like i said all we're gonna do is let that simmer like that for about five minutes stirring occasionally of course in fact i switched to the freakishly small but oddly wide wooden spoon i just got tired of how that whisk felt on the bottom of the pan so i switched to the softer and quieter wood but anyway like i said give that a stir once in a while simmer gently for about five minutes and as far as the viscosity goes you can obviously add a little more water if you want it thinner or a little less if you want it thicker you are of course the boss of your kfc sauce and when mine was done it looked like this so i'm gonna go ahead and turn off the heat and yes you can serve this hot or warm which in that case you would taste and adjust the seasoning right here but since i'm going to serve mine at room temperature that's the temperature i want to taste and adjust okay you know the rule of thumb always taste it at the temp you're going to serve it so i let mine cool i transferred it into a serving container and that korean fried chicken sauce is done and then this would usually be the time where we pour this over something and taste it and i tell you how great it is but we're not gonna do that so for now you're just gonna have to take my word for it that this is an incredibly tasty and well-balanced sauce and it really is fantastic on so many things except i don't want you to serve it with so many things i want you to serve it on korean fried chicken which is the next video [Music] korean fried chicken that's right sorry kentucky but for my money this is the best kfc and while this does not include 11 secret herbs and spices it's still incredibly flavorful teeth shatteringly crunchy and there's no bones to deal with so you can eat it super fast alright so let's go ahead and get started and the first step would be to prep the chicken and for this we're going to use boneless skinless chicken thighs and for the size of thighs i'm using i'm going to go ahead and cut these in four pieces each and if you flip it over this way with the smooth side down and the rougher side up you're actually going to see some natural seams in the meat so this one side here that's a little thinner i like to cut it right there which is kind of like i said a natural seam and then another cut right here and then that other side which is just a little bigger a little fatter i'll just turn and cut that in half and that's gonna give me four relatively similar sized pieces and then once we've cut up our thighs into chunks we're gonna go ahead and toss those in a bowl so we can start the marinade which is super simple so to the chicken we're gonna add some salt some freshly ground black pepper some finely finely minced garlic and believe it or not some grated onion oh yeah who does not enjoy a good cry so we're gonna take an onion and we're gonna take a cheese grater and we're gonna grate the onion right into the bowl and by the way do yourself a big favor and just get a half a small onion and grate it i was trying to use up some pieces i had left over which ended up being very awkward to great and hard and i almost lost a nail but eventually i did get it done and no it's not going to be the same if you dice it all right it has to be grated we want all those cell membranes in the onions being torn apart so a bunch of crazy compounds will be released and that's what's going to do the magic in this marinade so we're going to take a spatula we're going to mix that very very thoroughly make sure all that garlic and onion is evenly distributed and once that's been mixed up very very thoroughly what we're going to do is wrap that tightly and refrigerate that from four hours to overnight and while i do prefer leaving this overnight it's totally fine and delicious with as little as four hours okay so we're gonna pop that in the fridge and then really nothing happens until you're ready to fry so we'll fast forward 10 hours our chicken's marinated and we're ready to make the batter so that's going to start with some self-rising flour which is just flour with baking powder and salt in it so if you don't have that of course i'll give you the full recipe on the blog and then to the flour we're also going to add some corn starch and then we'll season this up a little bit with a pinch of salt a little bit of sugar and some freshly ground black pepper and that's going to be it for the dry ingredients so we'll go ahead and give that a whisk mix everything evenly and then the last and most important ingredient ice water so we're going to take some ice water we're going to stir that in until we basically have something that resembles a pancake batter and by the way one tip don't just read the measurement i give you for the water and just dump it all in and mix it because what if it's too much all right add 80 of it give it a stir see what you got add a little more etc okay but basically when you're done it should look exactly like this and of course you're going to give it the old poca poca with your finger to test and it should coat your finger nice and thickly like that so that looks perfect at that point we're ready to preheat our fryer for the first of two fryings so we're gonna go ahead and preheat our fryer to 340 degrees and while that oil is heating up let's go ahead and transfer our chicken into the batter so we'll go ahead and pull our chicken out of the fridge unwrap it and transfer those chunks into the batter and please do not worry about any little pieces of onion or garlic sticking to the chicken alright we want those stuck on there that just adds to the awesomeness and some people do like to do this one piece at a time they'll batter a piece of chicken and throw it in a fryer i like to put all my chicken in the bowl first and then just pull them out one by one and into the fryer so once our oil is up to temperature we're gonna take a piece of chicken that's been thoroughly coated in that batter and we're gonna carefully place it into the oil trying super hard not to splash ourselves in fact feel free to lower it in slower than i just did and speaking of lowering the chicken in you shouldn't have too much trouble with this stuff sticking to each other just make sure as you lower one piece you're not lowering it right on top of a piece that just went in so a crust is going to form on there very quickly but as you're placing these pieces in try to place it into a fresh spot in the oil or at least a spot where there's already been a chicken piece frying but anyway what we're going to do is we're going to fry that chicken for four minutes and obviously because i have a small fryer i'm gonna do this in batches so we're gonna go four minutes at 340 at which point we're going to remove that to a cooling rack or a crinkled up piece of foil and we'll let that cool down and prepare itself for the final frying and by the way you can do this step ahead of time that's something else we'll discuss on the blog so i went ahead and i did the first fry on the rest of the chunks and even though it's only halfway done there's definitely going to be a little bit of crispiness to it but as they say except in grammar class you ain't seen nothing yet when you are ready to serve you're going to crank your fryer up to 3.75 we're going to pop those back in for another frying about three to four minutes or until beautifully golden brown and insanely crispy and of course exact cooking times are going to depend on the size of your chunks but for me about four minutes on each frying was perfect and when your chicken chunks look like that we're gonna pull those out we'll throw them on the rack to drain for a second and at this point you may want to turn your volume up just a little bit because check this out oh man fork don't lie and you know what else doesn't lie teeth anyway as delicious as that was right off the rack and i could have totally eaten that whole batch just like that we are going to plate this up so we can spoon over our amazing and 100 perfectly authentic korean fried chicken sauce maybe garnish with a little bit of green onion if you want to throw some toasted sesame seeds over that's also very nice but suit yourself you are the michelle we of your kfc and then just in case you thought i faked those sound effects earlier let's go in with the fork and above and beyond the amazing amazing texture that chicken so moist and flavorful and you got those little microscopic pieces of garlic and onion in there just a fantastic experience so anyway there you go korean fried chicken and by korean of course i need south korean i'm sorry but i just can't officially recognize any country that finds dennis rodman interesting and i'm telling you i like all kinds of fried chicken but this is by far my favorite method so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy fried chicken sandwich that's right because of all the recent hoopla i attempted to make a copycat popeye's fried chicken sandwich and you'll be happy to know i was actually very successful at making a copycat chick-fil-a fried chicken sandwich at least appearance and texture-wise the taste really was very close to popeyes so i guess what we have here is the best of both worlds and to get started with this incredibly delicious hybrid what we'll do first is make our marinade which is going to consist of some buttermilk some salt some hot sauce and then by far the most important ingredient in this entire operation some dry ranch dressing mix and the one i'm using here is from a certain valley that's fairly well hidden but anyway we'll go ahead and mix this up and the reason for the dressing mix is not just because of the herbs and spices it's because it contains copious amounts of msg which in case you're wondering is really the reason that people line up for fast food right besides the convenience and low prices okay it's a proven scientific fact that msg makes everything taste better like a lot better and some might even say addictively better and then what we'll do once our marinade's mixed let's go ahead and find a couple chicken breasts to toss in there and what i'm using here is some boneless skinless brass which do not contain the tenderloin or fillet or finger as it's called okay so if you see that piece of finger shaped meat you should probably pull it out and use it in a salad and then one thing i like to do before we dunk these is take a sharp knife and make a few relatively shallow slashes in the thick end right like three or four one way and three or four the other and you may have actually seen us do this trick when we prep chicken for the grill and what that's going to do is help our marinade get into the chicken a little better plus it will also help that thicken cook a little more evenly in relationship to the thinner end and then what we'll do once those are prepped is go ahead and toss them in our marinade until they're very well coated and submerged and once that's been accomplished what we'll do is transfer this into the fridge to marinade for anywhere between two and four hours right that is my recommendation some people say you can go overnight but for me that might be a little too long and then what we'll do while that's chilling in the fridge is go ahead and make up our breading mix which is going to be mostly all-purpose flour to which we will add a little bit of corn starch as well as some salt along with its good friend freshly ground black pepper and of course some cayenne and not a little a lot if you want your fried chicken breast spicy which i do and then we can finish up with the rest of our dry ranch dressy mix powder because msg and please note i added that with one spoon and then grabbed a different spoon to give this a mix for no apparent reason and then once that is combined we can move on to the final component the wash which for me is going to be nothing more than one egg plus some buttermilk and a little splash of regular milk and once that's all in there we'll give it a mix and by the way in future experiments with this recipe i'm going to figure out a way to turn our marinade into our wash but for now we're just going to do it separate and that's it once all our components are ready and our breasts have marinated for a sufficient amount of time we can begin the breading process and that will involve using a fork to pull our chicken out of our marinade and we will let almost all the excess drip off at which point we will coat that very thoroughly on both sides with our seasoned flour breading mix and for filming slash demonstration purposes i'm just going to do one here so i'm going to go ahead and pop that other one back in the fridge so i can make that for michelle later and then what we'll do after that first flowering is go ahead and shake off the excess before giving it a dip in our wash and then once that surface has been saturated we will go back into the flour again coating it very thoroughly on both sides and we are actually going to do this twice which is hopefully going to give us a nice thick sort of gnarly and a regular surface which will hopefully fry up nice and crispy and crunchy and i'm not sure but for some reason i switched to my hands here which did not work as well as the fork right your fingertips are going to sort of rub off that coating so when you do this just use the fork all the way through oh and i should mention some people claim that popeyes uses corn flakes in this breading which they say creates that extra crunchy surface but i've eaten a lot of that stuff as in like a dangerous amount and i've never really seen or tasted what i thought were corn flakes so i'm not really sure about that and of course if you have any inside info let me know but anyway getting back to this i managed to give it the old double dip after which i transferred it onto this rack so we can let it dry for at least 15 minutes before we fry it okay you really do want to give your coatings time to adhere before you fry things and at this point i was thinking this is looking pretty good right that surface sort of looked like what i was going for although some people say you can dip and dredge that like three or four times to get even more of a gnarly coating it may be more similar to what you see at popeyes but anyway i stopped it too and like i said we're going to let this sit for at least 15 minutes before it hits the hot oil which of course you've heated up all your weight to a temperature of 350 to 375. and once up to temp we will carefully place that in and we're going to go ahead and fry this for about four to five minutes depending on the size of your breast or until it's beautifully golden brown and crispy and safely cooked through and you don't have to but about halfway through i gave mine a flip because i really do love to play with my food and yes in case you're wondering you can totally pan fry this in like an inch of oil in a cast iron skillet that will work just fine if you don't have a deep fryer so that's up to you i mean you guys are after all the olive oils of your fried chicken sandwich toils and i don't mean olive oil the oil i mean olive oil popeye's girlfriend which is spelled oyl and if you know that you're old but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and cook this for about four or five minutes at which point we'll pull that out and transfer it onto some crinkled up foil and that's so the bottom doesn't get soggy which can happen if you drain this on a paper towel since that bottom will steam but here with the foil we have room for that to escape and speaking of crispy this sure looked right but of course we have to check and as you well know fork don't lie [Applause] in fact i saw someone wearing a t-shirt that said that the other day but anyway that sounded just about right on both sides and i couldn't wait to see if it tasted right so i spread some mayo on a lightly buttered and toasted hamburger bun and for the full fast food experience do not buy some beautiful artisan bun from a bakery right go to the grocery store and look for the package that has the most ingredients because that's the one you want and other than the mayo the only other thing this is going to get is some sliced dill pickles and then we will place our absolutely gorgeous chicken breast on the top and then lean our bun like this and take a bunch of pictures at which point we'll place our bun directly on top and take a bunch more pictures and then finally about 10 minutes later i went in for a bite which as you're about to hear was still very crispy and just as importantly incredibly delicious right that meat was super juicy and flavorful and really was reminiscent of popeye's fried chicken but while that coating really was beautifully crunchy it really did not have the same level of crispiness that popeye's fried chicken does and was way way more similar to a chick-fil-a sandwich which i realize is good news for some of you but bad news for others so like i said in the intro i somehow ended up with a hybrid of both versions but there was one problem that really doesn't even sound like a problem two large breasts okay the breasts i used were like eight ounces and what you really want for this sandwich is like something between four and six right the chicken the crispy breading ratio is off here and when you have this amount of steaming moist meat and that thin amount of coating it's actually going to start to separate and come off as you can probably notice from these eating shots which is not like an actual serious problem like fast food addiction oh and one other thing that wasn't really a problem was this cody not staying crunchy after sitting for a while right this was like over 15 minutes later as you can hear it still had the sound too astound but anyway that's it my attempted a crispy fried chicken sandwich while this didn't come out exactly like the ones at those aforementioned chains it was still very very good and by being able to make this at home you don't have to worry about some fast food store running out and if you want you could eat these on sunday so amen to that and i'll finish by saying i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] karage that's right i'm going to show you how to make japanese style fried chicken which is not only one of the easiest fried chicken recipes to do it might also be the best fried chicken recipe or at the very least the best fried chicken that does not include bones and skin alright classic southern fried chicken should be in a category all by itself but as far as boneless skinless chicken goes it does not get any better than this so with that let's go ahead and get started with our marinade which we'll begin by grating one large garlic clove into this mixing bowl using our good old trusty microplane and by the way don't be a hero okay 97 of a garlic clove is plenty so don't grate a fingertip trying to get those last couple molecules and then besides the garlic we'll also want some freshly grated ginger root which we do want to peel first and the easiest way to do that is by scraping it with a spoon right not only is that faster than a peeler it also just removes the skin and you don't lose any of the root itself and once we have that peel we'll go ahead and grate in about two or three teaspoons or as much as you want all right everything in this marinade is to taste and can be adjusted and then what we'll do once that's set besides pick up that little piece of skin is go ahead and pour in some soy sauce all right full strength no low sodium we need that sodium we will also add a little bit of sake which is japanese rice wine as well as some urine which is a sweet japanese rice wine which is primarily used for cooking only although if it's a liquid and it contains alcohol someone's drinking it and then we will also want a little bit of sesame oil right just a touch as well as some freshly ground black pepper a couple few shakes of cayenne a little bit of white sugar and last but not least a little bit of salt and we'll go ahead and give that a quick mix and all these ingredients should be available in any large grocery store but if you can't find mirin you can just use a little extra sake and another pinch of sugar and it will be fine and then once that's set we can move on to prepping our chicken thighs which since they're boneless and skinless simply means cutting them up and for smaller thighs like this i'm probably just going to cut that in half since i generally shoot for about two inch pieces and then for the larger thighs i like to cut those in three pieces and there's usually one side that's a little thinner and smaller than the other and i'm not sure if you can see it but there's almost like a natural seam there right that side of the thigh is not as thick so i like to make one cut right there at the thinnest point and then we will turn that thick side and cut that and have to make two more pieces so that is how i like to prep mine but as long as they're all about the same size you go ahead and cut these up any way you want and then what we'll do is go ahead and transfer that into our marinade and since i already have chicken on my hand i'll go ahead and use that to mix this up and as usual when we're working with chicken thighs we want to mix very very thoroughly our chicken thighs are famous for their nooks and crannies so take your time and make sure everything's evenly coated and as we finish up i like to end up with the nook and cranny side down and that smoother side up since i just feel like they marinade better that way but i can't prove it it is just a feeling and then once that's set we'll want to pop this in the fridge for anywhere between an hour which is the minimum up to 10 hours which i think is the maximum all right some people say you can go longer but i don't believe them and what we can do while our chicken soaks is set up our dredging station and for that we should have some kind of baking rack set over a foil lined pan which is going to allow for some air to circulate underneath but if you don't have one just scrunch up some aluminum foil and then we will also need some starch to dredge our chicken in and ideally that's going to be potato starch which looks and feels exactly like corn starch and that's what you can use if you can't find it but you can and then what we'll do once our chicken's marinated long enough is go ahead and pull that out and give it a mix and then we'll dredge two or three pieces at a time by tossing it in our starch and we will make sure those pieces are very generously coated all over and then we'll shake off the excess and transfer it onto our rack and by the way i've tested all the different starches for this technique but for me this pure potato starch definitely works out the best and by the way don't accidentally buy potato flour which is definitely not the same thing and what's going to happen almost immediately is that starch will start to hydrate as it absorbs that marinade and moisture from the chicken and your pieces will go from looking white and flowery to sort of something that looks tan and sticky which is exactly what we want to have happen and one thing i like to do once i have all those dredged is i like to give them a flip just in case thanks to gravity any excess moisture kind of dripped underneath i feel like by flipping them over that might even things out or on the other hand there's a chance i do that for nothing so suit yourself and by the way if you see any spots that are just really bright white and thick with starch you can go ahead and rub that off since if there's too much dry starch on these when you fry them after they're done they're going to have like white patches which i don't think is that attractive and then what we'll do before we fry these is pop them in the fridge uncovered for about 15 to 30 minutes to basically let that starch fully hydrate and dry out a little bit which is why i really want you to have these on a rack speaking of which we'll give that rack the old tapatapa to knock off any loose chunks before we pop it in the fridge and if everything goes according to plan about 20 minutes later or so they should look something like this and that's it these are now ready to fry which i'm gonna do in some 350 degree oil for about three to four minutes depending on the size or until the inside's cooked through and the outside is crunchy and beautifully browned and if you're using a tiny fryer like i am do not crowd these since if you add too many they will stick together which reminds me after about 30 seconds we'll want to go ahead and take our spider which is what these strainers are called and we'll want to give these a little bit of a mix and a stir to make sure they're not sticking and like i said depending on the size we're going to cook these for about three to four minutes at which point they should look like some of the most beautiful fried chicken you've ever seen in your life and we'll remove those to a plate with a paper towel for a few seconds before we plate up and you might be thinking that coating looks crispy but is it really crispy well check it out oh yeah fork don't lie and that's it we'll go ahead and serve these up next to a little bit of optional fresh lemon and that my friends as i said earlier for chicken that does not contain skin or bones is probably the best fried chicken of all time and i'm not suggesting you do it but if you walked around randomly stopping japanese people on the street and asked them what their all-time favorite food is a very very large percentage would say chicken karagi except they'd probably pronounce it right i mean not only is the texture incredible with that super thin but still very crispy crust but thanks to what's basically a brining process in the marinade this chicken is so savory and so flavorful and so moist it almost defies description alright even the thinnest of the thinnest pieces are still so juicy and by the way michelle prefers lemon which is why i'm serving it this way but you can also use lime if you want which is very nice so feel free to use that if you prefer i mean you are after all the stuff in clay of your chicken karage but either way a little bit of acidity is nice to cut through the richness but anyway to recap i could not have been happier with how this came out although i do want to quickly show you one more method since some folks think karage should always be fried twice and to do that we'll start off exactly like we did the last batch except instead of cooking it for three to four minutes we will only cook it like one and a half to two minutes and then pull it out and what we'll do is transfer it onto a rack to cool and then we'll fry it for a second time which is supposed to make it a lot crispier whoops these two are stuck there we go and above and beyond that possible advantage if you're doing this for a party or a large group the twice fried method makes a lot of sense since you can cook it halfway at this point and then you can do your final frying when you're ready to serve but no matter your reason once those pieces have cooled to room temp we'll go ahead and pop those back into 350 degree oil for about two minutes or so or until just like the first batch the insides cook through and the outside is crunchy and beautifully browned and if you do fry twice the outside is going to get a little darker and yes it's true a little bit crispier or maybe a lot crispier but the fact is whether it's a little more or a lot more the twice fried method definitely produces a crispier chicken and like i said if you're doing a party prepping these ahead with that first fry is definitely the way to go but if we're just gonna cook up a small batch and we're gonna eat right away i really honestly don't think you need to mess with that second friend since like i said and you heard that first batch was amazing but anyway that's it my take on chicken karage whether you fry it once or you fry it twice both ways are very nice which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy honey brined southern fried chicken breast so we're going to attempt the impossible a delicious southern fried chicken using boneless skinless chicken breast which is insane all right so here is what i did step one we needed to make sure the chicken breasts don't dry out so we're going to do a brine which you'll read about on the post how this works but it's water cold water salt and honey now if you want to do the boiling water and let it cool and put some ice in it and all that kind of stuff go ahead i don't bother salt will dissolve in here if you stir it i waited a couple minutes stirred it again how did i know it was dissolved there wasn't any at the bottom all right so i mixed that up i added two boneless skinless chicken breasts those are big ones okay very voluptuous eight ounces now those are under the surface but i want to make sure so i'm gonna weight it down with this plate by the way that reminds me i need olives i'm gonna cover that with plastic we're gonna let that sit in the refrigerator brining for one hour one hour later take it out drain it dry it very well with paper towels and then just enough buttermilk to coat it what makes southern fried chicken so high calorie and high fat is mostly the skin and a thick breading that soaks up lots of oil so the game plan here is a very very thin coating we're going to let the chicken sit in the buttermilk at room temperature for 15 minutes i'm going to make a seasoned flour ingredients on the website of course i got some garlic and onion salt some black pepper some cayenne i know what you're thinking that's a lot of cayenne no it's not all right we're gonna give that a mix the chicken breasts have been sitting in the buttermilk for 15 minutes i'm gonna dredge those in the flour all right make sure it's coated extremely well it's got to be totally totally coated caked on all right put it on a rack and let it sit out for 15 minutes more all right that may seem minor but that is an important step it has to sit out 15 minutes resting so when we're ready we're going to go over to the stove i have my vegetable oil at 350 to start you put the chicken in the temperature is going to drop to about 300 310 somewhere in there and that's where it should stay so i'm going to keep my heated about medium just a hair above medium and that should do it now the big challenge here with doing a boneless skinless chicken breast with that thin of a coating i was terrified that the coating was going to be totally burnt in black before the chicken cooked because this chicken is going to take you know 12 to 15 minutes to cook through so here i'm turning it and i was thinking oh that looks pretty good okay that worked very good kind of excited and then i realized i turned it too early so i stuck the thermometer in it was still only reading like 100 degrees i was like oh no what am i gonna do by the way check out this technique i've perfected where i don't focus on the big thing in the front i focus on the little thing in the back i think that's pretty you know cutting edge so at this point i realized chicken's not done but i have to turn it over because the other side would get black if i didn't so i turned it back over something you're never supposed to do you're only supposed to turn fried chicken once but you know what we're using boneless skinless chicken breasts so we're breaking all the rules all right so that looked really good i was happy with that i was just praying it would cook before the other side burnt all right one of the breasts was a little smaller that finished first i went with an internal temperature of 155 it's gonna raise a little bit as it sits and there they are we're gonna let those cool at least five minutes so at this point i was thrilled the coating stayed on that was my first fear it didn't get too black before the chicken cooked through that was my second fear and then my last concern which is you know the most obvious could a chicken breast without the skin without the bones taste good the proof is in the proverbial pudding i cut into that thing and it was absolutely perfection the brine that honey brine kept the chicken incredibly moist as i already mentioned what makes a fried piece of chicken high fat high calorie is usually the skin in a thick thick coating well we don't have any skin of course but look how thin and crisp that coating is it was just perfect so is this going to compare to a traditional southern fried chicken of course not but if you're looking for a way way lighter version this is it i mean that thin thin coating can't physically absorb that much oil so that's the key here and even though the coating was really thin and it was in that hot oil for almost 15 minutes the brine kept it really really really juicy so i was really happy how this turned out and of course i know some of you are thinking hey where's the gravy who needs gravy when you have spicy orange chicken wing glaze so anyway even if you don't fry it that brine was really nice and ultra simple like two ingredients that would work for roasted grilled baked broiled whatever chicken you want to do anyway i'm gonna stop the eating fried chicken torture and tell you to give this a try really really really good lots more information on the site about the scientific process of brining you know like a sentence along with all the ingredients as usual and as always enjoy rice crispy wings that's right it does sound like we used the crispy cereal for this which we didn't so when and if this goes viral potentially hundreds of thousands of people may be disappointed but you know what i'm okay with that they'll be fine anyway these were the experimental wings i teased at the end of the mumbo sauce video and while we have posted many chicken wing recipes on the channel i believe this is the first time we're ever gonna fry them which is the original and probably best method for buffalo wings so with that let's go ahead and get started with some split chicken wings which as you can see were separated as we say in the business into the flats and the drums and since this was an experiment i'm only doing a small batch here so this was just like a pound and a quarter and what we'll do first is season these up or as the kids these days like to say dry brine them and i'm going to be doing that very simply with what looks like a dangerous amount of kosher salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper and of course some cayenne and then once that's been applied we'll give it a thorough mixing which if i wasn't filming i would definitely do with my bare hand since that does work so much better as long as you wash it afterwards and by the way feel free to personalize these by adding any other spices you want right you are after all the tom petty of getting these ready so you don't have to season them like me but anyway we'll go ahead and mix those up with our salt and any other spices we're using at which point we're going to wrap these and pop them in the fridge for at least two hours which is not only hopefully going to make these very flavorful but also keep them nice and juicy once they're fried so i'm going to place on some plastic and pop those in the fridge and while we're waiting we can go ahead and find some of this stone ground rice flour and what's nice about this stuff is it's not too fine which as you'll see really helps create a sauce grabbing texture plus this stuff is gluten free if that's something you're into or should i say not into and what we'll do is pour some of that into some kind of dish or plate and i debated whether to add some seasoning to this but i decided not to because i was pretty aggressive with the wings but you certainly could if you want and then what we'll do once our wings have been in the fridge for a couple hours is pull them out and begin dredging these in our rice flour which believe it or not is going to be the only thing we're going to coat these in so this really is an extremely simple technique and because of that salt we added earlier these should have a nice sheen to the surface and that little bit of moisture is really going to grab onto this flower so we'll go ahead and give those a light but thorough coating shaking off the excess and then once we've gone through and dredged all our wings we have to do a very underrated and often not done step and that would be to let these sit out for about 15 minutes or so before we fry them okay if you dredge these and go straight into the hot oil you just don't get as good of a coating so what we'll do once these are coated with our flour and on a plate is kind of spread them out to allow for a little bit of air circulation and then we'll just let these sit out for about 15 minutes allowing that starch to really fuse to the surface and i know you have the wicked munchies and you've started eating your mumbo sauce with a spoon but it really is worth the wait so i did let mine sit for 15 minutes at which point we can go ahead and fry these in 375 degree oil for about 10 to 12 minutes depending on the size and generally what i like to do here is wait about a minute and then take my strainer and give this a little bit of an agitation just in case anything's sticking together which it probably won't be but we might as well check and then we'll simply let these continue frying for like i said a total time of about 10 to 12 minutes or until the outside's crispy and the inside is totally cooked through so i thought these were looking pretty good and i went ahead and pulled him out and his culinary custom dictates i transferred those onto a rack and i brought that into some better light so i could check these out and to be honest at first i wasn't quite sure how these came out right the rice flour didn't get as dark as some other coatings and it kind of sort of looked like sandpaper so i proceeded to the old time test to check the crispiness because as you know fork don't lie so they definitely sounded legit but just to be safe i ate one to confirm and now was standing there somewhat at appearance they were very flavorful and while the coating was light it was still surprisingly crispy and as i soon found out because of the unique texture from that rice flour this coating really was outstanding when it comes to sauce adhesion okay thanks to that rough surface area this stuff really does grab onto the sauce so i officially did my experiment a6s and then decided to test it using the traditional buffalo style chicken wing method where we take some hot right out of the fryer wings and then spoon over the sauce and give them a toss to coat and the great thing about the traditional buffalo style method is total coverage but anytime you do what they call a wet style wing you're definitely going to lose some of that crispiness so as with all wing recipes you're going to have to decide whether to dip or coat although visually i think the traditional way always looks kind of cool so i coated those with my mumbo and finished them with a few green onions and then continued eating sorry i mean evaluating and then just for old times sake in case you never caught our video for how to eat a flat chicken wing we never gnaw around those two bones we loosen the small one and twist and pull that out which allows us to pull off or bite off the rest of the meat with no bone involved and yes i absolutely do eat that little bit of piece of cartilage left in there it's good for my hair and nails or at least my nails but anyway that's it what we're calling rice crispy wings or at least that's what my wife michelle thought we should call him i was actually gonna call him rice flower wings until she came up with a significantly better name but anyway whether you're looking for a gluten-free coating or what's just a very light crispy and delicious coating i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] crispy cider batter chicken fingers that's right believe it or not the best beer batter is not made with beer it is actually done with sparkling apple cider which produces a light beautifully crispy and very flavorful coating not to mention it's extremely easy and only requires two ingredients in fact the only downside is that i'd rather drink leftover beer than leftover cider but other than that this really is an incredible technique and to get started the first thing we'll do is slice up our chicken breasts which i like to do first by flipping them over so we can find that natural crease where the tenderloin was removed and we'll make our first cut right there at which point i like to turn the breast and then cut from the thinner end to the thicker end at a little bit of an angle attempting to get pieces of chicken roughly the size of a finger and yes using my cutting method you will get different lengths but when frying chicken fingers it's not about the length it's all about the girth okay we need these pieces to have a very similar thickness so that they all finish cooking at the same time and that's it once our chicken's been fingered we will transfer that into a mixing bowl and season it up with some kosher salt some freshly ground black pepper and some cayenne at which point we'll mix this all together until it's evenly coated and of course if you want to use some more exotic herbs and spices for this stage go ahead i mean you are after all the roger adultery of how to season your poultry and this is where you can show us culinary speaking who are you who who who so please feel free to customize this as you see fit and then once we have that flavored we'll go ahead and sprinkle over a few tablespoons of flour and we'll give the bowl the whole shake of shakeout which will partially coat our chicken strips with the flour but we will need to go in with our hands or tongs to finish the job and we do want to make sure every bit of that surface area is coated with flour and then once that's set i like to transfer these onto a rack so that the surface can dry out a little bit although just transferring those onto a plate will also work and yes many people will add the salt and seasonings to the flour but using that method i'm never quite sure how much of that seasoning is getting to the chicken so i much much prefer to salt and season the chicken first i just think it works out much better and then what we'll do is transfer our flour chicken into the fridge for at least 10 minutes to give it time to adhere properly but also so our chicken stays cold while we make our batter which is going to begin with a cup of self-rising flour and as i dump this into the bowl please note the giant clouded dust that appears okay in addition to already having the baking powder and salt milled into the flour this stuff tends to be ground a lot finer than regular all-purpose flour which seems to work out very nicely for batters like this so yes well you can just add baking powder and salt to regular flour to make this i do recommend the self-rising flour if you can find it which you can and then to this we will add our only other ingredients and that would be some sparkling apple cider and in the spirit of full disclosure i'm using a hard cider which i prefer for batters and drinking but a non-alcoholic cider will also work and for a cup of flour i'm going to whisk in about a cup and a quarter of cider okay i usually start with about a cup and then i'll check it and if it seems a little bit thick i'll add another splash and basically what we're trying to end up with here is something that's like a very thin pancake batter right something closer to but not quite as thin as a crepe batter and as you may know the thinner your batter the thinner and crispier your coating is going to be but we don't want it too thin and it definitely needs to be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and then what we'll do once we have that mixed up is transfer it into the fridge so it can sit for at least five to ten minutes before we use it okay we want to give that flower a little bit of time to hydrate and please note when you pull that out of the fridge in like five or ten minutes it will have thickened up a little bit which is to be expected and totally fine and that's it at this point we are now ready to fry which means adding our cold chicken to our cold batter where we will make sure it's fully coated before it goes into the oil and by the way for filming purposes i'm just going to toss three in here and then head to the fryer all right when you do this you can just do one at a time as they're going in the oil and i would have done that i just wasn't able to get a good shot of both the bowl and the fryer but nevertheless once we have those dipped and coated and we let some of the excess drip off into the bowl we will carefully place those into 375 degree oil where we will fry those for about three to four minutes and yes because our batter is so thin those little drips that are falling in the fryer as we do this we're going to produce a whole bunch of frying flakes on the surface but that is no big deal and as this fries those are going to stick together and we can actually remove them with our strainer oh and one other thing worth noting here is any fry cook can tell you when you deep fry something in brand new oil like i'm doing here the first batch or two are always going to come out very light so even though this first batch looks a little bit light as i pull it out it really was beautifully cooked and as you're about to hear perfectly crispy oh yeah fork don't lie but anyway appearances aside the coating seemed perfect but i decided to bite in to make sure and that my friends when you consider taste and texture was just a phenomenal fried chicken finger and you can see that coating is like impossibly thin yet still somehow maintains a beautiful crispiness and by using that slightly sweeter fruitier cider instead of beer i think we really do get something that's more flavorful oh and upon further review with the new oil i didn't want to overcook these to get a deeper golden brown but after tasting they were still very moist and juicy so i probably could have fried another half minute which i'll do in the next batch and of course we don't want to eat these plain which is why i whipped up a little bit of my hot and sweet mustard dipping sauce which i will include in the written recipe but it's really nothing more than some dijon rice vinegar and hot sauce and as far as things to stick and dips go it does not get any better than a crispy fried chicken finger so i really did thoroughly enjoy this test batch and then headed back to the fryer to make some more oh by the way on these let me show you one trick i learned from my japanese fried chicken friends one thing you might want to try is it about halfway through the cooking time let's go ahead and pull these up out of the oil and just let them cool down in the air for about 20 to 30 seconds or so and then put them back in to continue the frying and apparently that's supposed to make your coating even crispier and yes if you're doing a lot of these you can just cook these all like 75 of the way and then let them cool completely and keep them in the fridge and then just crisp them up in the hot oil for a few minutes when you're ready to serve and besides that little trick i did let this batch fry about 30 seconds more which as you can see did result in these being a little more golden brown but that's also because we already fried a batch and then just because these are called chicken fingers does not mean we can't go with a fine dining presentation as i'm attempting to do here by placing these over an arugula apple and celery salad then i dress with a simple apple cider vinaigrette and then instead of serving this with a dip which is never going to get you a michelin star we'll go ahead and spoon the dip over and also call it a sauce for what i think is a much nicer or as we say in the business higher end presentation and obviously use whatever kind of dipping sauce you want except ranch if you're going higher end but that tangy spicy sweet goodness of this mustard dip really did pair perfectly and the combination of those hot crispy chicken fingers with that cold crunchy salad really was an amazing pairing speaking of which the combination of that sweet juicy crunch of an apple and that bitter juicy crunch of the celery really does help punch up all the other flavors so not only was it some of the best chicken fingers i've had in recent memory it was one of the best salads i've had in a long time which reminds me nothing makes vegetables and salads more kid friendly than topping it with crispy fried chicken fingers which also makes it very adult friendly as well but no matter what you serve it on or with i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy buffalo chicken nuggets i am very excited to show you this since we are actually going to make a real nugget which is certainly not the same thing as just deep frying a little piece of chicken okay as we say in the business a nugget must be fabricated so with that let's go ahead and get started by adding some boneless skinless chicken thigh to a food processor and yes it is true that chicken breast is almost always used here but the meat from a chicken thigh tastes almost identical to a chicken wing and since that's what we're going for here that's what i'm going to use and then to that we're going to add a little bit of filler in the form of some dry bread crumbs we will of course also need some salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper and then after the pepper i'm going to sneak in a little bit of old day which is a seasoning blend and if you're not familiar with it as usual i will explain that on the blog post i think we should also toss in a little bit of paprika as well as some of that fan favorite cayenne pepper okay so that's gonna be it for our dry seasoning so now we're gonna do a little wet seasoning we're gonna drizzle in one tablespoon of hot sauce preferably frank's it's not the best hot sauce but it is traditional and then we'll finish up with the second ingredient that makes wing sauce wing sauce some melted butter although fun fact the original buffalo wing was done with margarine i know the horror so we'll do a little bit of melted butter at which point we're going to want to process this by pulsing on and off until we've achieved basically a coarse chicken paste so you know the drill just pulse it on and off on and off and right here you can get a really great look at my pulsing finger form okay you want to maintain like an 18 to 20 degree angle on that first knuckle for maximum control but anyway like i said we're going to process that until we have a coarse paste and exactly how coarse of course is up to you you are after all the deez nuts of these nuggets but let me take this top off and pull the blade out so you can see how far i went so i'm not really trying to get something that's super smooth but i really don't want a lot of big chunks in it either so that is looking pretty good and then what we'll do once our nugget base has been aced is portion it up and as you may know my favorite tool for something like this would be the sorbet scoop and if you're thinking what happens if some of those portions aren't perfectly equal well nothing actually unless they were really far off and then they may not cook at the same rate but anyway i went ahead and scooped up 24 portions in note to self next time start first row closer to the edge since i know placing that one scoop there really really bothered many of you you know who you are and then what we'll want to do once that's portioned is cover that with a little bit of plastic and then chill it thoroughly since it'll be easier to work with which you can do in the fridge if you want but to expedite things i just like to pop mine in the freezer for about 15 minutes and what we can do while we're waiting is go ahead mix up our starch mixture which i almost call the breading but it's not all we're going to coat our nuggets with is some corn starch into which we're going to mix some self-rising flour which is nothing more than regular flour with baking powder and salt in it and then speaking of salt we'll add a little extra pinch and as you probably noticed we'll just add everything to a plastic bag which will make mixing this and coating our nuggets relatively mess free but anyway we'll make sure that's mixed thoroughly and that is now ready to coat our hopefully somewhat slightly firmer chicken mixture and no we don't want them frozen solid that's not going to work okay we just want them to firm up a little bit but still be pliable so that is perfect right there and we can go ahead and start tossing those into our flour mixture three or four at a time and i guess you could shape these as you go but for whatever reason i generally like to coat them first and then go around forming them into the shape of my choice and personally i'm going to be going with your classic nugget shape sort of oval and flattened out to about 5 8 of an inch and as long as you do sort of flatten them out to a similar thickness you can pretty much make any shape you want so if you want to do circles or squares or trapezoids feel free whatever you're into and then once our nuggets have been starched and shaped i would love to tell you they're ready to fry but they're not i mean you could but they're not going to look that good right what we really want to do is pop these in the fridge overnight so that that starch on the surface hydrates and we lose that powdery white appearance of course having said that that's not what i did right the sun was going down and i wanted to finish the video so i decided to fry these just after a couple hours and while it looks like most of the starch is hydrated you can sort of see it still looks a little bit powdery but anyway we'll revisit that issue later for now let's just go ahead and fry these up and we are recommending our famous twice fried method and what that involves is frying these for exactly one minute at 300 degrees chilling them and then frying them a second time at 375 so that they get beautifully golden brown and crispy okay you may remember this technique from such videos as french fries and korean fried chicken so like i said we'll just do one minute at 300 at which point we will chill those in the fridge until we're ready for the second frying and by the way if you're making a whole bunch of these for future use it's after this first frying that you would store them in the freezer and that way you can just pull them out and pop them in the hot oil when you're ready to serve which by the way is exactly what they've done to the nuggets you buy at the store but anyway to recap we cook those for a minute at 300 and then chilled them at which point they are now ready to finish for just two minutes at 3.75 assuming of course yours have been flattened out to a similar size or if they're bigger it's going to take longer and i should mention just in case two-step frying procedures aren't your thing you can certainly just fry these once at 375 for about three and a half minutes but they won't be quite as gorgeous or crispy but anyway i am using the two-step method and this is what might look like after the second frying at 375 for two minutes and not only do i think those look beautiful but you have to admit those do look extremely nugget-like and who said they don't look that crispy the microphone was far away but trust me they were crispy and then of course once your nuggets have been successfully fried we will serve those up with possibly some celery sticks as well as some blue cheese dressing which i've spiked with some hot sauce and yes you can toss these nuggets in buffalo wing sauce before you serve them but i prefer to dip and by combining the hot sauce and the blue cheese we're doing half the work to get both sauces in one bite but forget about the dip for a second it was fine but these nuggets really were amazing right in addition to that thin crispy coating we have a tender flavorful and very juicy interior and as i mentioned earlier because we use chicken thigh the actual taste of the meat is way closer to a chicken wing than if we'd use breast and by the way have you using breast instead of thighs because of the fat you got to read some books that's okay now yes upon further review fat's good sugar bad but anyway i was just absolutely thrilled with how these came out except for one minor thing remember when i said we should leave these overnight so the starch has time to hydrate okay if we look very closely at this last one you see those kind of lighter drier patches okay that's what happens if you cook these too soon and that starch is not hydrated so before we sign off let me show you some additional footage i shot the next day right they should have this sort of pink look to them and not still be white and powdery and if you do have the patience and or time management skills to do these the night before this is what they're actually supposed to look like after you fry them okay not a huge difference but definitely a little bit of a richer deeper color as well as none of those unsightly powdery spots but anyway that's it how to make your own chicken nuggets we did sort of a buffalo style wing approach here but this really is more of a techniques video and you can season these any way you want so whether you're going to make them for the big game or not i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredients in mount tamworth as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 256,998

Keywords: best fried chicken, best fried chicken recipe, how to make fried chicken, southern fried chiken, buttermilk fried chicken, nashville hot chicken, korean fried chicken, japanese fried chicken, chicken fingers, chicken strips, chicken nuggets, honey-brined, popeye's, chik-fil-a, kfc, kentucky fried chicken, karaage, fried chicken sandwich, easy fried chicken, how to fry chicken, southern cooking, healthy fried chicken, healthier fried chicken, chicken breast

Id: Rm1CD-ObnE8

Length: 69min 52sec (4192 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 02 2022