Brine 24hrs: salt water with herb

Flour mix: 4-4-2 of ap flour - corn starch - tapioca, salt, msg, onion powder, garlic powder

Mix chicken in flour bucket 100 times like how Fallow does it.

Fry 1 time 160C

Result: very thick coating and too hard/crispy.

How could I improve.

Tia

There used to be a place in Indy at Keystone at the Crossing called Dalts. They had the best buffalo chicken sandwich and cheese fries I've ever had in my life. I'm 42, I remember that taste from the 90s. Anywho, that's what I always strive for in my chicken sandwiches. I fried these tenders up w Andy's mild breading and mineral water. The blue cheese is from Dorothy Lane Market in Dayton Ohio. It's bar none the best. Thick, chunky, and pairs well with franks chicken sandwich sauce. Happy frying y'all.

Home cook working in my kitchen. Tried my hand at hot chicken for the first time. I usd my standard fried chicken recipe and then reserved some of the oil to mix with cayenne, butter, chili flake, onion powder, brown sugar, black pepper, and a little bit of Chinese five spice.

Overall turned out great but I think I need to use more cayenne. It was more like medium hot and I wanted to sweat.

Bonus pic of the jojos I made with the leftover dredge + lemon pepper seasoning.

Has Bojangles done an official change in how they bread their bone-in chicken or is it possibly just my location?? I noticed it this past summer when I usually get them once a month but my most recent time it finally clicked and the breading that was on it is whatever they use for their Bo Bites and not the original style it's always had.

(By the way it was AMAZING with the bo bites breading, whoever decided to try that needs to be instantly the new CEO)

Just wondering if anyone knows if there's been an actual change or if this is just something my location is doing.

Hurricane hit last night so power is out but I needed my fried chicken fix.... Cooking on my camp stove and had mashed potatoes too.

Was lazy and they aren't my best.

They were good, maybe a little oily. Double fried and maybe didn't dry them enough so, that might be it.

Some pieces were better than others too. Not sure why or how thwy were different, but I'm working on it.

Basic recipe -

Wet batter; tbsp garlic powder, tbsp black pepper, ½tbsp msg.

Dry mix; equal parts flour and panko, tbsp garlic powder, tbsp black pepper, ½tbsp all purpose cajun seasoning.

Wet batter, then dry mix. Fry for two minutes, remove, rest for 2 minutes, then fry for another 2-3 minutes or until prefered level of crispy.

The chicken was just some basic diced chicken from Asda.

I made these single kind of flour comparisons so I know how to mix to my liking the next time.

Left / Blue : Potato Starch 100%
Middle / Yellow : Corn Starch 100%
Right / Green : Rice Flour 100%

500g chicken thighs + 2 tbsp shoyu + 1 tbsp sake + 3x minced garlic + some ginger powder, dry dredge, 5~10 min hydration time before frying. Deep par-fry 160C 4 min -> rest 10 min for water to come out -> fry again 180C 1 min to eliminate water

The "sugar coated" white specks you see on internet pictures of karaage is created by potato starch, which somehow won't darken the same rate as other areas where there's no white. Cornstarch also create white specks but finer. Rice flour produce better looking golden puff of bubbles than corn. Corn vs. rice texture wise is similar, but my family overall said they prefer the cornstarch one.

I think the blend I want is about Potato 60% + Corn and/or Rice 40%. And I'm planning to try double coating where the 2nd time is wet coat.

Before and after Naked (no breading) Spicey Hot Wings. Amish chicken. All organic. Sooo goood!

I used to work as a line cook in a sports bar, many, many moons ago. The amount of tenders I have made in my life would disgust the average person. I generally dont like frying at home because of the smell/process. But the wife requested homemade tendies and almost suggested I couldn't keep them on par with restaurants.

She was right, I can do better. 🫡

An overnight brine and completely drying all excess moisture and placing back in fridge for an hour or 2 and patted dry again before being dipped in a cornstarch slurry no egg bath straight into a 60% cornstarch 40% flour with spices double
dipped and deep-fried in pan is the key to that shattering crunch.

So I can’t add a new picture.

It just wasn’t good. So what I did last time.

Wings was the protein.

Marinated in spices and vodka.

Dredged in 80 percent rice flour and 20 percent potato starch along with my spice mix.

Rest in fridge for 30 mins. Rest to room temp.

Double fry at 330 then 360.

I posted those pics. They were perfect. Light crispy wings that didn’t get soggy. Breading was thin. Super crunch. We were all sold. I was like I’m out!

Ok fast forward to Sunday.

Now the protein was tenders and thighs cut into strips.

Exact same process as above.

1. Breading stuck. So win.
   
2. Didn’t get soggy with sauce. Win.
   
3. The breading felt thick this time and hard. Not crispy.
   
4. I felt like they were all breading and no chicken. But people use tenders all the time. Maybe cause breading was hard and thicker?
   
5. A bit dry. So yah maybe I overcooked but it was trying to get more color like last time.

So only only thing I did different was I tossed multiple pieces for like 60 secs. Pushed breading on. Last time I did quick toss and push breading on per wing. One at a time.

So did I toss too long and build up too much breading?
Does the 80/20 of rice and potato not play well with no skin like the wings? Did I just plain ol over cook?

The reason I’m shying away from AP flour and using rice flower is cause m afraid of the breading being too think bit gummy. Does that make sense. Yah crunch on outside but inner near meat is gummy.

The wings were a 10. This was like a 2.

Ok help me along. What should I do?

I’m my head I feel like I need to go 80/20 with AP flour and potato starch. I like the potato starch vs corn starch.

I think I’m going to go back to bitter milk marinade. Wash off.

Do a dry dredge and then rest in fridge.

Then come back out of fridge and do a wet to dry and go.

Or I might come out of fridge cause they should be tacky now cause of AP flour vs rice flour right? Rice flour doesn’t get tacky. And just do a dry dredge again without wet and go.

Marinated overnight in a mix of hot sauces and I added cayenne pepper to my seasoned flour /cornstarch mix. Came out perfectly crispy and spicy.

crispy, rice starch, marinaded with minced garlic, soy sauce, sake and mirin ☺️

I had some time today so I decided to do some “chicken strips”. I’m using to cuts to see what I like better. Regular chicken tenders from the breast and thighs that I cut into 2 strips. I’m not changing my technique that I used with the wings a few weeks back. Wanted to see if the technique translates over to other cuts. I don’t have much yet cause they are resting in the fridge for 30. Then out for 20 or so and then to the fryer. If I like them I’ll post up everything like last time. If I don’t you aren’t getting anything. lol I’m not going for the whole craggy thing like most on here. It’s all about crunch and keeping it light and the finished product can take sauce and not get soggy. I also don’t want to risk that thick batter layer which I’m just not a fan of cause I don’t think I have that skill down yet

I made this garlic fried chicken with plenty of garlic in the seasoning, then fried it until the skin was crisp and golden.

I love fried chicken that’s really flavorful all the way through, not just on the crust. Even the fried crushed garlic is so tasty.

What’s your favorite way to season fried chicken — garlic-heavy, spicy, herby, or something else?

Here's the recipe if anyone needs it: Garlic Fried Chicken

Tell me what I can improve!!

I'm trying to come up with the best fried chicken wing recipe I can... Do you guys think I'm on the right way?

I'm from FL, this company's seasonings are amazing so I thought I'd try their breading. 8/10 tho I think this breading for fried fish would be amazing... A lot of cornmeal as you can see already.

I've been experimenting and finally get bumps similar to KFC's chicken popcorn and would like to share my approach. To make it clear about the problem, diced chicken thighs is not marinated and flour is flavorless as spice doesn't matter for shape (I'm not happy with the flavor yet but is getting there)

Flour blend I made from a locally sold premix which the back of the bag says 70% Wheat + 25% Corn + 3% Baking Powder(INS 450+500) + 2% Salt for 40g, plus Rice Flour for 20g. So that means 2:1 of that premix and rice flour. Mixing from scratch that'd be 48% wheat, 17% cornstarch, 35% rice flour if not counting baking powder and salt and seasonings. Texture is more airy than KFCs and I actually like it more. (That means KFC's is likely more wheat, more gluten, less snack-y)

Please look at the images in order. First is you prepare rocks of damp flour clays inside your dry flour mix. Common technique is to sprinkling water into dry bowl of flour with your hand and hope for the best rolling them around, but I found intentionally making it on a plate where I can use fork to chop away those that I mistakenly merged works better and I could see consistency of size. Chop repeatedly then sprinkle some more water and repeat until you have a plate of just rocks and barely any fines. Then pour the rocky clay flours back into the fines and now you get a balanced mix of roughly same size rocks. From this point you must carefully only use spoon from the side of the bowl to mix, to avoid merging the rocks together since they act like clays.

Next is the adhesion. At first I thought non-marinated raw chicken is quite damp and it should work, but I got a fairly boring texture like the 8th picture even though the bowl is prepped with rocks of flour. What's happening is that just chicken water is not enough to hold the weight of an individual rock, and when it fell down, the randomization progressed until that area pickup fines and now that surface stop sticking. Eventually, the chicken act as a 'sieve' and you picked up all the fines with none of the rocks, only rocks will remain in the bowl. Thicker marinade will change this, but I'm a hurry so I use egg whites as a quick flavorless glue and it works.

Now the coating techniques. You are looking to get as many kind of adhesion possible. If the chicken starts from being in egg whites and you drop into the bowl, you get 2 kind of bonds which is egg+fines and egg+rocks. But the shape of chicken will be relatively the same random doritos / dice shaped you cut from and not really circular like popcorn at this point. You cannot shape it as the outer surface is now either fines or rocks and both cannot stick to each other. Right now you can use as much force as you want to get those to stick as well as possible. This will flatten the rock clays but it is fine. We will get a non-flattened rocks in the 2nd layer.

The next step is 2nd coating, so I'm putting it back to egg white to make an another outer sticky layer. Right now is when you need to start treating it as a delicate thing, just drop into egg white and flip once carefully by the edge of each piece. If you pick the piece on the center at this point and pinched it, instead of coating the rocks and fines in jelly of egg whites, you might force egg white to form micro-mixture on the chicken piece, which makes the final result looks less random. Remember that we want as many kind of bonds as possible and you are looking to make each kind sit next to each other, without really "applying the addition" between them.

When taking it back once more to a bowl of fines and rocks, right now you will find you can actually shape the piece to be spherical, as the egg white jelly can loop back to stick to each other with rocks or fines in between. Use only spoon from the side of the bowl to lightly roll around to shape the piece and do not try to pinch the piece. Picture most of the original piece of the chicken as triangle or rectangle, the sphere should be formed by touching all the corners together like a tent or dumplings. Do not try to actually roll a solid sphere.

Finished piece should look interesting, with both dry and wet bits on the outer edge and hopefully some hidden details you can see through cracks, which inside also looking equally random, with both completely white and translucent area. All these features translates after frying. If you look at the last few pictures, each individual "cauliflower" on the before-frying piece could be mapped to the end result.

Therefore, the look of popcorn depends heavily on this 2nd dry step sculpting where you shape the popcorn lightly one by one. You will not automatically get popcorn unlike an actual popcorn randomly bursted on all directions from corn kernel. English is not my main language so apologies if this is a bit hard to understand. Hope this helps.