Juicy, delicious meat and an incredibly crisp and crunchy crust are two essential components of truly superb fried chicken. Here are four quick and simple methods for accomplishing both. Any fried chicken recipe you have, including the traditional family dish, fried chicken sandwiches, chicken fingers, and even plain fried chicken wings, will work with these tips. You will undoubtedly become the King of Crunch if you use them.
Salty Marinade
The majority of fried chicken recipes begin with a soak in some kind of seasoned marinade, be it buttermilk, milk and eggs, or even pickle juice. Your chicken will stay moist if you season this mixture with a lot of salt. This operates in the same way as a brine. A typical brine is a salt-water solution with around 6% salt by weight. Chicken t marinated in brine allows for greater moisture retention while cooking because the salt dissolves proteins in the muscular structure of the meat. Compared to unbrined chickens, brined chickens lose 30 to 40% less moisture.
Vodka Marinade
The addition of vodka to your marinade recipe aids in maintaining a light, crunchy crust as opposed to one that is thick, greasy, or leathery. Water vapour escapes from fried chicken, dehydrating the breading. A flavorful crust will then develop as the proteins in the flour and marinade start to firm and turn brown. The crunchier the crust and the more savoury the bird, the greater the surface area. Both of these areas are improved by vodka. First of all, it has a higher volatility than water, which makes up the majority of buttermilk, pickle juice, and pretty much every other fried chicken marinade you'll be using. It evaporates significantly faster and more violently as a result. By generating larger vapour bubbles and increasing the crust's surface area, this aids in removing moisture from the chicken's crust more quickly. Crispier, lighter-fried chicken results from each of these factors.
Add Some Liquid
Have you ever noticed that while frying a large quantity of chicken, the pieces you fry near the end come out crispier, crunchier, and with more surface area than the ones you fry at the start? This is due to the fact that, as you work, bits of marinade fall off the chicken and into the dry, seasoned flour mixture, generating tiny clumps that later attach to other pieces of chicken. These clumps dehydrate, brown, and crisp as the chicken fries, giving more flavour and crunch. So why not start with some moisture added to your dry spiced flour combination and then take use of this phenomenon?
Double Fry
The crust becomes dry and crunchy when fried, but you can't fry it for any longer than it takes the meat underneath to cook. If you cook the chicken for an excessively long time, the meat will be overdone and dry with an extra-crispy crust. You get extra-crunchy crust and meat that is still rather moist by first frying the chicken, letting it cool fully, and then frying it once again.
