- 8
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
- Table salt
- Dash hot sauce
- 3 teaspoons ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 3 1/2 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken parts (breasts, thighs, and drumsticks, or a mix, with breasts cut in half), trimmed of excess fat (see note)
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 3/4 cups vegetable oil
Preparation
Step 1
1. Whisk 1 cup buttermilk, 1 tablespoon salt, hot sauce, 1 teaspoon black pepper, ¼ teaspoon garlic powder, ¼ teaspoon paprika, and pinch of cayenne together in large bowl. Add chicken and turn to coat. Refrigerate, covered, at least 1 hour or up to overnight.
1. BRINE IN BUTTERMILK
Soaking the chicken in seasoned buttermilk both enhances flavor and ensures that the meat retains moisture.
2. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Whisk flour, baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, and remaining 2 teaspoons black pepper, ¾ teaspoon garlic powder, ¾ teaspoon paprika, and remaining cayenne together in large bowl. Add remaining ¼ cup buttermilk to flour mixture and mix with fingers until combined and small clumps form. Working with 1 piece at a time, dredge chicken pieces in flour mixture, pressing mixture onto pieces to form thick, even coating. Place dredged chicken on large plate, skin side up.
2. COAT IN BUTTERMILK
Adding a little buttermilk to the dry ingredients of the coating creates irregular texture, which translates to extra crunch.
3. Heat oil in 11-inch straight-sided sauté pan over medium-high heat to 375 degrees. Carefully place chicken pieces in pan, skin side down, and cook until golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Carefully flip and continue to cook until golden brown on second side, 2 to 4 minutes longer. Transfer chicken to wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet. Bake chicken until instant-read thermometer inserted into thickest part of chicken registers 160 degrees for breasts and 175 for legs and thighs, 15 to 20 minutes. (Smaller pieces may cook faster than larger pieces. Remove pieces from oven as they reach -correct temperature.) Let chicken rest 5 minutes before serving.
3. START ON STOVETOP
Frying in 1 3/4 cups of oil jumpstarts a super-crisp coating with minimal cleanup.
4. FINISH IN OVEN
Transferring the chicken to a 400-degree oven allows it to cook through without overbrowning.
TECHNIQUE
SALTING THE MILK
In fried chicken recipes, soaking the chicken in buttermilk is a standard approach that helps tenderize the meat (mainly the outer layers). But is adding salt to the buttermilk really necessary to ensure meat that’s also juicy?
EXPERIMENT
We cooked four batches of chicken side by side. Three of them were soaked for an hour, one in a solution of buttermilk and salt, one in only buttermilk, and one in a plain saltwater solution. The fourth was not soaked. All of the chicken was dredged in flour before frying.
RESULTS
The unsoaked chicken was dry and tough. The saltwater-soaked chicken was moist but a bit rubbery. The chicken soaked in plain buttermilk, while tender, was not terribly moist. Only the chicken soaked in salted buttermilk came out both tender and moist.
EXPLANATION
Buttermilk and salt play equally important roles here. Buttermilk contains lactic acid, which activates the cathepsin enzymes naturally present in meat as it penetrates mostly the outer layers of the chicken. These enzymes break down proteins into smaller molecules, tenderizing the meat. (We’ve found that strong acids such as wine and vinegar can break down so many proteins that the meat turns mushy, but the lactic acid in buttermilk is too weak to have this effect.) Just as in a traditional brine, the salt helps change the protein structure of meat so that it can retain more moisture as it cooks, producing noticeably juicier results.