Perfect Fried Chicken - How to Make Real Southern Fried Chicken

Perfect Crispy Fried Chicken

Fried chicken is one of those dishes that is simple in design, but seems to fall apart on execution. It constantly finds its way onto top comfort food lists, but also tends to trip up most cooks. The perfect fried chicken seems simple – tender juicy inside, flavorful crispy crust. Two elements. What can go wrong?

All kinds of things. Soggy, greasy crust, under or overcooked inside, insipid flavor, dried out texture – the list seems daunting. Images of happily munching a beautifully mahogany brown piece of crispy Southern goodness go out the window after a couple of failures, and a trip to the drive through for a bucket of that white-suited guy’s stuff seems the best most of us can get.

Except…there are ways to address each of these problems – when you have a little culinary magic at your disposal. Here’s how to make the magic happen. The cool thing is, when one element is in place, it helps at least one other element. All the pieces fall into place. Get them all, you've got perfect fried chicken - real southern fried chicken - and you’re Bombshell.

Don’t be intimidated by this article. The actual recipe would be pretty short. However, I really believe in teaching WHY things happen, so you can take that information and apply it to the rest of your cooking. That way I haven’t given you just a recipe, I’ve given a lesson, and you’re actually closer to freedom FROM recipes!

Crust – there are two elements to making this work. The frying method and the ‘double dip’.

The frying method has two parts:

Heat – The temperature of the oil is critical. You really need to have either a deep fat fryer with a built in thermometer, or have an instant read or candy thermometer that will clip to the side of your pan. The temperature needs to be right at 350F. This will mean a golden brown crust, and allow the interior to cook through correctly, and have both of these elements happening at the same time.

Oil – You need to use the right medium in which to fry. You can use vegetable oil, shortening, lard or whatever, but my personal preference is peanut oil. It does cost more than most oils, true. But recently I have seen (and bought) reasonably sized bottles. Until lately, it was usually sold by the gallon for deep frying turkeys at Thanksgiving, and was hard to find in smaller amount. But it’s out there now. This one works for a couple of reasons. It can hold a relatively high temperature without burning, coloring, or acquiring an off flavor. And it doesn’t impart a flavor of its own to what you’re cooking. If you can’t find it or don’t want to, try vegetable oil. The temperature of the oil is more important that the type.

Coating – I use a modified double dip.

I always feel like I’m trying to explain a maneuver in an Olympic sport when I talk about it – I call my signature move the semi-double. All this means is I dip in flour, then buttermilk, and back into the flour.

You’ll notice when reading the recipe below that a couple of different times I tell you to put the chicken on the rack to let it rest. The reason for this is to improve and preserve the coating. If the flour/buttermilk mixture rests after you coat the chicken with it, the coating has a chance to ‘meld’ – the differing elements that go into the curst, the skin, the buttermilk, the layers of flour – become more a unit. This prevents the crust from separating from the chicken when it hits the hot oil.

Using the semi-double dip also means that you’ll have a nice layer of crust – not sp thin so you barely know it’s there, nor so thick you need an excavator to find the chicken inside.

Juiciness – You’re going to do two things to insure that the chicken is juicy inside.

Brine – many southern cooks, my grandmother and great grandmother included, soaked their chicken in buttermilk before frying, and/or used it as a part of the breading. For a few years my mother fell away from the faith, but she’s now back in the buttermilk fold. We’re doing both. You’re going to harness the power of lactic acid, which is the active agent in buttermilk (for our purposes!). Lactic acid will actually help in denaturing the proteins in the chicken, which will not only make it tender, it will be the medium by which we get flavor INTO the bird, not just on the outside. Make a brine, but instead of water, use buttermilk. You’ll be amazed at the difference in flavor.

Temperature – I already talked about temperature above, but an additional point is this. If you have the oil at the right temperature, the crust is sealed quickly, which keeps the juices inside the chicken, not dispersing out into the oil. An additional bonus is the oil won’t crackle and spit as much. It will some – just not as much. The right temperature also means less oil is absorbed into the crust, which keeps it from having the greasy feel which can be so icky.

Flavor

Brine – Brine for meat is the coolest thing. This is your magic potion. It’s a way to get flavor inside the meat, so that the meat itself has great flavor, not just the crust or exterior. It works by reverse osmosis – in a nutshell the semi-permeable membranes of the muscle tissue will take up the flavor in the brine and hang on to it while cooking. It seems like you’re using acres of salt – and you are. But it doesn’t end up in salty meat at all. You end up with well seasoned meat – which is far different. The one thing to watch on the brine is timing – chicken can brine for up to overnight – but not much longer. Then you would get salty. Ew.

Flavoring the semi-double dip – many recipes will call for seasoning the crust elements, or using a brine, but not both. That simply means you’ll have a tasty interior or crust but not both. That’s just wrong. Make sure the seasonings appear in each element, and then the chicken will be intensely flavorful through and through. And don’t panic over what seems like large amounts of seasonings – if you think about how tiny an amount actually ends up on each piece, it’ll make sense. And once you taste it, it’ll REALLY make sense.

Real Southern Fried Chicken Recipe

11/4 cups kosher salt OR

1/2 cup table salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 medium garlic heads, cloves peeled and smacked

2-3 sprigs of thyme or rosemary, or both, crushed in your palms
5 cups buttermilk

1 whole chicken (about 3½ pounds), giblets discarded, cut into 12 pieces

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp paprika

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

3 cups peanut oil or shortening – however much it takes to fill your pan with oil a couple inches deep

1. In the bowl of a food processor combine salt and sugar, and process to combine. Add garlic cloves, and process just a moment, until the garlic, salt and sugar form a paste, but you still have large chunks of garlic. Put this mixture into a large container – large enough to hold all the chicken. Add the herbs and buttermilk. Stir well to dissolve the salt and sugar. Add the chicken pieces, turning to make sure all are immersed. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours, which is ideal. Don’t allow it to go longer than overnight.

2. Set a wire rack over a cookie sheet. Remove the chicken from the brine and discard the brine. Set the chicken pieces in a single layer on the wire rack, and refrigerate. Don’t cover the chicken at this point – you want it to air dry somewhat for a couple of hours. If need be, after two hours, you can cover it and refrigerate for up to eight hours before proceeding.

3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika. Taste the flour mixture. Yes, I mean it. You should be able to taste lots of flavor – not just the ‘nothing’ of raw flour. If this mixture doesn’t taste good, re-season until it does. This is important – this is a prime component of the crust.

4. In a second bowl, whisk together egg, buttermilk, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. Note* - a major magazine a few years ago published a recipe for “Ultimate Crispy Fried Chicken” using baking soda in the buttermilk dip. They said that the mixture would bubble from the combination of lactic acid and the baking soda. I’ve never had that happen. But it might. If it doesn’t, so what? Besides – my recipe is better. J

5. One at a time, dredge (that just means cover in flour) each piece of chicken in the flour and shake off the extra. Return the chicken to the rack in between stages of the dip. After the flour, coat chicken in the buttermilk mixture, then one more time into the flour. After the last dip in flour, make sure the chicken sits on the rack for about ten minutes. This sets the coating so it won’t float off the chicken when it hits the hot oil.

6. While the chicken is setting, preheat your oven as low as it will go – mine goes to abut 150F. Make sure your oil has reached 350F. Have a platter or rack ready for the oven, and several layers of paper towels on the counter. Working a couple pieces at a time, place chicken in hot oil. Make sure you don’t crowd the pan – if you do, the chicken will steam on the outside instead of fry and the crust won’t be crispy. Allow each piece to get golden on one side before turning.

7. If the brine is a magic potion, then a good meat thermometer is your magic wand. The two pieces that always seem to have doneness issues are the breast and the thigh. You want an interior temperature of 160F. I promise, the few dollars you’ll spend will pay you back a thousand fold in flavor dollars. Get one. Once the crust has gotten to that perfect dark golden brown, insert the probe of the thermometer into the thickest part of the meat. You want to hit a minimum of 155F – there will be a little carry over cooking once you remove the meat from the pan.

8. If by chance you have a problem getting the temperature up without burning the outside – no problem. Simply increase your oven temperature to 350F, and finish the chicken off in the oven. If there is an underdone piece, it will probably be the breast or thigh. I do these pieces first, so if I need a little time to finish them, the other pieces will still be frying. Once the temperature on the breast and thigh are right, turn the oven back down to its lowest setting and proceed.

9. As each piece is finished, drain it on the paper towels for a couple of minutes to get rid of any excess oil. Then pop it on the rack in the slow oven. The chicken can rest there, while staying warm as the remainder of the pieces cook.

10. That’s it – once they are all done, let them sit for about five minutes out of the heat, then dig in.