Fried Chicken, Take 2

Thursday night I tried out another fried chicken recipe. And may I say, second time was the charm, becuase this chicken was GOOD! I made four breast pieces (using skinless boneless chicken breasts), and this recipe was just enough to cover all four, with a little leftover, but not enough where I felt like I was wasting a lot of batter.


These are the ingredients I started out with.

First, of course, you put the oil in and start heating it up while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. This is fresh oil, so it looks nice and pure. You should see it after you use it a few times, though - ick.

Now that you have the oil heating up, you mix together the dry ingredients. Here we're using 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 T garlic salt (I used garlic powder, because we didn't have garlic salt), 1 t black pepper, and 1/4 t poultry seasoning. (Of course, T means tablespoon, and t means teaspoon.) Throw it all in a bowl, mix it all together, and set it aside.

Next you mix up the crispy batter ingredients. Here we're using 2/3 cup flour, 1/2 t salt, 1 beaten egg yolk (I kind of felt guilty throwing away the white, but what can I do with one egg white?) and 3/4 cup flat beer or water (I used flat beer). Mix it all together, and set it aside once again.

Now for the fun stuff. You take a piece of chicken (in my case, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but of course you can use the more traditional fryer pieces, too), and dip it first into the dry ingredients.

Then you dip it in the wet ingredients, getting it nicely covered, all sloppy like.

Then you dip it into the dry ingredients again.

Place the chicken in the fryer (the recipe didn't say how hot to make it - I set it to about 375) and let it cook for 15-18 minutes. I was doing fairly large breasts, and could only do them one at a time, unfortunately, so I was standing at the fryer for just over an hour. But smaller pieces could be done together, of course (or if you had a bigger fryer, that would let you do more pieces, too). I cooked these for 15 minutes each, and they came out perfectly done.

Here's the first piece, fresh out of the oil. Sorry if the pictures are kind of blurry - I love having a digital camera, but the way the screen is on this one, I couldn't tell that this picture and the next one were a little blurry until I had them on the computer, and by then it was too late to retake them. C'est la vie.

Here it is after I cut into it and ate the first bite. I don't have audio of me eating it, but here's what it sounded like: "oh man. Oh that's good. Mmm." Hmm. Sounds kind of dirty, huh. :) It was that good, though. I LOVE a good piece of crispy chicken.

So there we are. My search for a good fried chicken recipe is over in two tries. Here's the recipe, as I found it on cooks.com (with my notes in parentheses).

Crispy Fried Chicken

Seasoned Flour

1 (3 lb.) fryer, cut up (or 4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts)
1 1/2 c. flour
1 T garlic salt
1 t black pepper
1 1/2 t paprika
1/4 t poultry seasoning

Crispy Batter:

2/3 c. flour
1/2 t salt
1 beaten egg yolk
3/4 c. flat beer or water

Combine ingredients for seasoned flour and set aside. Combine ingredients for crispy batter and set aside. Heat oil in frying pan or deep fat fryer (I would actually start this before you start combining ingredients). Dip chicken in seasoned flour. Dip chicken in crispy batter. Dip again in seasoned flour. Fry for 15-18 minutes or until well browned. Drain on paper towels.

Fried Chicken Recipe Search

J bought a deep fat fryer recently. You know this, because I posted about making donuts in it (mmm, donuts). Well, I took some chicken out for dinner for last night, and I wanted to try out a fried chicken recipe. So I searched online and found one that looked interesting, and that called for using a deep fat fryer, instead of just a pan with oil in it (we have this fryer now, why do I want to use a pan? I don't).

Last night while I was making the chicken, I got my camera out and took some pictures. I don't know, I guess I was feeling like copying Pioneer Woman. Badly copying. She does it WAY better.

So, do you want to see me making fried chicken? If so, read on!

You start by boiling chicken for 20-25 minutes. The recipe called for a fryer, but I did three chicken breasts. Here they are after they got done boiling (I didn't think of taking pictures until they were done, sorry). I don't know that I've ever boiled chicken before, so I was surprised by how much the breasts shrunk up. It turned out to be a good thing that they did, though, because they wouldn't all have fit into the fryer basket if they hadn't.

The recipe was pretty basic - it just called for the chicken, 2 eggs separated (I only used one, because I halved the recipe, since I was only doing three pieces of chicken, and that one egg isn't pictured because I had already separated it), 3/4 cup flat beer, 3/4 cup flour, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons cooking oil, 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder and of course the fat for frying (we're using canola oil).

Once you have the chicken boiled, you take it out of the water and pat it dry, and then you start mixing up the rest of the ingredients. The first thing you do is beat the egg whites until stiff. Yes, you have to give the egg a stiffy. Ha! I love juvenile humor.

These could have been a bit stiffer, but I was sick of beating them. And anyway, they were close enough.

Once the egg whites are done being beaten (those bad egg whites), you mix the rest of the ingredients together, and then you fold in the egg whites. Folding instead of mixing, because you want it to keep that light texture from the eggs.

Once they're nicely folded in, you coat the chicken completely. It's incredibly hard to take a picture with one hand while holding chicken up with the other hand, by the way. Just so you know.

Here are all three pieces, coated and in the fryer basket, ready to be fried.

Bubbling oil looks so dangerous and scary. But yummy, somehow, in an artery clogging way.

And here is the chicken, all done after 5-7 minutes in the fryer.

It came out really well, although it probably could have used a little less time in the pan when I was boiling it in the beginning. It was pretty much done before I even put it in the fryer, so it ended up just a tad dry. But it was pretty tasty. The coating seemed to be lacking a little bit in flavor, though. It could have used more spice than just the garlic powder. Unfortunately, I'm not a good enough cook to be able to know how to spice it up, so I'll continue the search for a great fried chicken recipe. This one was good, though. J ate a piece cold when he got home, and he liked it, too. I just thought it could use more flavor.

And that's my first foray into the world of making fried chicken! Exciting, huh? If you have any good fried chicken recipes, feel free to send them to me, through the comments or by e-mail (avidreader7 @ gmail.com). I'd love to try your favorite recipe out, too.

And here, in case you want it, is this recipe. I got it from www.cooks.com.

Beer Batter Chicken

3/4 cup flat beer
1 fryer, cut up
2 eggs, separated
3/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon cooking oil
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Fat for deep frying

Place chicken in pan and pour in just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Remove from broth; drain and pat dry. Heat fat to 375 degrees. Beat egg whites until stiff. Beat together beer, flour, salt, the 1 1/2 teaspoons oil, garlic powder and egg yolks. Beat until smooth. Fold egg whites into beer batter. Dip chicken pieces, one at a time, into the batter. Fry in hot fat 5-7 minutes.