The Best Fried Chicken You'll Ever Make | Epicurious 101

the crunch says everything I'm Frank Proto professional chef and color instructor and today I'm going to show you how to make fried chicken with my method you're going to get crunchy juicy tender chicken that's never dry this is Fried Chicken [Music] 101 this might be controversial but I like to use boneless chicken thighs the thigh has lots of flavor to it has some fat to it and it doesn't dry out that easy and it gets nice and crisp when you fry it up people might say chef Frank why boneless in order for it to get a nice crispy crust and be cooked all the way through I like to take the bones out I'll bone them myself if you like bone in chicken this recipe still works you just need to cook it a little bit longer time to bone out my chicken thighs this is a firm boning knife what I like to do is get in there alongside the bones open it up pinch under the bone run my knife through save these for stock don't throw them away get any cartilage off trim off any extra skin I do want skin on there but I don't want a lot of extra cut this in half and I just think it's a better portion size now some might argue oh that's just a nugget or a chicken finger but chicken fingers and Nuggets are not made with thighs with the skin on this is not a nugget this is not a chicken finger I stand by my word okay my chicken is prepped now it's time to make my brine a Brian is basically a salty solution that we're going to marinate our chicken in the Brian is going to Tender fries it's going to add flavor it's going to add some saltiness and seasoning that's going to allow our chicken to hold on to moisture what I like to do is mix my brine in a bowl before I put it in my chicken to make sure all of my ingredients are distributed really well and what I have here is some buttermilk now buttermilk is a cultured milk it has a lot of acidity it's got some tanginess I like to add hot sauce to my mixture as well this is Louisiana hot sauce I think it tastes great you can use whatever hot sauce you have garlic powder now you might say hey chef Frank you're a fancy Chef why using garlic powder I really think garlic powder is a great convenience ingredient in order to get the punch that this gives I'd have to add a lot of fresh garlic and I think garlic powder does a job some mustard powder mustard powder might be one of those ingredients that you're questioning I think mustard has a great sharpness to it it adds a little spice to this just flavor that everyone's like I know that flavor but I'm not sure what you put in here and then of course Salt this is a brine so we want a fair amount of salt so once I have all these things in the bowl just whisk it together so it's combined really nice make sure everything melts the salt melts in there and we don't have any big lumps once it's combined all this can go right on top make sure the chicken is covered with brine so if you have to make a little more make a little more chicken when you put it in a bowl tends to stick to itself so if you don't move it around you're going to have the outside of these two pieces of chicken brine and the center with no brine so I like to just mix it up to make sure my chicken gets coated really really well the most important part of the brining process is to let it sit I do at least 12 hours now if you don't have 12 hours that's fine but if you want to maximize that juiciness and tenderness of the chicken you need at least 12 hours in the fridge the chicken has been Browning for 12 hours and now we're going to dredge basically we're taking our wet chicken and coating it with dry flour the whole point of doing this dredge is that the flour mixture is going to coat our chicken form a nice crispy crust to seal in the moisture to ensure a juicy Fried Chicken first thing I want to do is season my dredge I'm going to add about a couple tablespoons of salt here if we don't add salt to The Dredge it's going to be a little Bland and then I have some fresh cracked black pepper I like using a whisk for dry ingredients it distributes things really well and then we can just take our chicken out of the Brine and put it right into the dredge that brine is kind of sticking I want that that's going to help my flour stick to those pieces of chicken so just drain it lightly place them into the flour work caution here don't just start dumping a lot of chicken in here I do two or three pieces at a time if you add a lot of chicken at once our flour gets really too clumpy and it gets really difficult to work with 1 th000 pieces in there I'm not going to be able to coat it really well make sure that we get it into all the cracks and crevices give it a light shake and then we're going to put it on the rack I like to use a rack for this part because it allows the dredge to evenly absorb the moisture from the chicken I try not to let them Touch Too Much so we're going to let this first dredge of flour soak into the chicken we want to let this sit so that the dredge gets a little sticky and wet and this is going to ensure that our crust does not slide off the finished piece of chicken if it's wet and sticky don't worry it's going to be okay because I'm going to do a second dredge before we fry so that we get that really nice thick crispy crust one important thing here is not to get rid of your flour at this point the brine that fell in there kind of wet some of the flour and we got these nice little lumps this is going to be great when we do our second dredge cuz those lumps are going to give us nice crunchy pieces so we've finished the first dredge of the chicken we're going to let it sit here for about 25 to 30 minutes which gives us a lot of time to set up our fryer we have our chicken that has absorbed all of that first dredge we have our dredge and we have our hot oil I chose to use a cast iron cast iron pans are really dense and retain heat when you fry sometimes when you add the chicken to the pan you get a dip in temperature and it makes your chicken greasy and Soggy the cast iron lets us hold on to that heat and maintain a nice even temperature throughout frying so I'm going to take my chicken you can see that it's nice and sticky I'm going to put it in for the second dredge I'm going to get those nice big chunks those nice big bits give it a light Shake but don't shake it off too much cuz that flour is going to be our crust when we drop into the fryer we drop away from us so that if it splashes it splashes away from us you can adjust your heat if you feel it's too high I think I got a really nice heat right now and we're just going to let it fry leave it alone once we start to see it getting brown on the bottom will give it a flip one of the most important things that you want to watch for when you fry is Bubbles if you see bubbles that means moisture is cooking out and it's sealing that chicken in oil is not getting in if you drop this into the pan and there's no bubbles you're going to have greasy chicken so you want to make sure that you always have some bubbles all right so it's been about 4 minutes and we're going to flip it over so the other side can cook I'm flipping away from it as well so I don't get flashed this batch is ready to go drain it really well so we're not dripping everywhere right onto a rack the reason I want to put this on a rack is that it won't be sitting in its juices and it'll remain crispy if you put this on a plate the chicken's going to steam from underneath and your chicken's going to get soggy and we don't want that so put it on a rack to rest drain it really good and then you fry your next batch if I was to take this chicken and not do the second dredge all the spots where it was wet would actually burn so that second dredge is really important watch what's going on I'm looking for a nice even brown color on the bottom before I give it the flip so my chicken is done frying look at it it's got that nice craggly crust on the outside I know that it's juicy in the middle because I brind it I just can't wait to get this on a plate and eat it my fried chicken takes a little time takes a little effort takes a little bit of love but look at it it is gorgeous who would not want want to have a piece of this Fried Chicken put up to my microphone can we hear this that is the sound of crispy chicken that wasn't a big enough bite hold on the crust is super crisp the chicken on the inside's super juicy the seasoning is all throughout the chicken cuz we let it brine for 12 hours I think this is the perfect fried chicken I know frying at home can be intimidating sometimes but if you follow my method you follow my technique you're going to have tender juicy and crispy fried chicken every single time [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 270,077

Keywords: best fried chicken recipe, chicken, cooking tutorial, easy fried chicken recipe, epicurious, epicurious 101, fried, fried chicken, fried chicken recipe, how to fry chicken, how to fry chicken at home, how to make crispy fried chicken, how to make fried chicken for beginners, how to make fried chicken video, how to make kentucky fried chicken at home, how to make the best fried chicken, kfc chicken recipe, kfc style fried chicken recipe

Id: EjoGYzBtj3M

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2024