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Brined French Fried Chicken
(Source: www.davidlebovitz.com)
Everybody (or, at least, most people) loves good fried chicken. However, most people are clueless as to how to make their fried chicken as crispy and tender as possible. There are four secrets to for you to get that very crispy fried chicken that you have always been craving. First, adding the right amount of salt to the liquid marinade so that the chicken does not lose its moisture while it is being fried. The next step is to add the correct amount of vodka to the liquid marinade. Thirdly, liquid needs to be added to the flour or other dry mixture used to bread the chicken. Finally, the chicken should be fried twice so that the skin can be extra crispy and juicy. Follow the recipe to get more detailed instructions as to how to do this.
Brined French Fried Chicken
Ingredients
1 whole chicken skin-on chicken, cut into 8 or 10 pieces
Marinade
2 cups buttermilk
1 ½ teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons Morton’s Kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 tablespoons vodka
Flour Mixture
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
2 teaspoons salt (preferably kosher or sea salt)
Few pinches of freshly ground black pepper
Oil or fat for frying
Method
You need to mix the marinade ingredients together and reserve 8 tablespoons of it.
Place the rest in a plastic bag that can be tightly sealed along with the chicken pieces. Afterwards, you rub the chicken pieces together before sealing the bag and place in fridge so that they can absorb marinade overnight.
After taking out marinated chicken pieces, mix the ingredients for the flour mixture together in a mixing bowl. Drizzle the reserved marinade in the mixture before whisking it in.
Remove the chicken pieces from the buttermilk brine mixture and coat them with the flour mixture before setting them aside.
In a hot cast-iron pan heat the oil or fat for frying. When measuring the temperature, it should be at 350°F or 180°C before you put in the chicken to be fried.
Fry the chicken pieces (while turning over with tongs) until they all the sides are golden brown and the meat juices run clear.
Let fried chicken remain at room temperature for 30 minutes before frying once more.
