Fry immediately Some insist that you should let the coated chicken sit before frying. Not at KFC—their rule is “from flour to fryer.” If the chicken is left to sit, the breading will soften for a less-than-crispy result and the skin will fall off the chicken too easily.
But it is acceptable to let your chicken sit at room temperature for up to 30 minutes before frying. This step also ensures that your chicken cooks evenly and has a superior texture.
After the final coating in crumbs, allow the cutlets to rest for about 10 minutes before frying, a step that also helps the breading stay attached. Make sure to use enough oil in the skillet, (for cutlets, about half an inch; more for thicker pieces of chicken).
Excellent! Uncooked chicken breasts are really only good for 1-2 days in the fridge (assuming that they were thawed), and I wouldn't recommend storing them floured in the freezer. I think the most practical solution would be to fry or bake them, and then flash freeze them.
Don't start breading that chicken straight from the fridge—if you fry it now, the temperature of the oil will drop and your chicken won't cook evenly (plus, you can forget about crispy skin). Instead, let the meat sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Don't Crowd the Pan
Another mistake people make when frying chicken is crowding the pan. If you put too many chicken pieces in the pan at once, the temperature of the oil will drop, and the chicken won't get crispy. You want to make sure that you have enough space in the pan for the chicken pieces to cook evenly.
The secret to easy, fool-proof fried chicken
The trick is a secret step before that bird ever hits hot oil. First, poach the chicken until fully cooked in seasoned buttermilk. Then dredge it and shallow fry it just to warm through and make that great crispy exterior.
You Don't Start Dry
The first step to breading chicken is crucial; make sure the chicken is completely dry before starting the dredging process. Using a paper towel, pat the meat dry on all sides. Excess moisture will cause the flour to get soggy and thus will not adhere properly to the chicken.
The reason why we want to dredge chicken in flour is simple! It's because we want to make chicken's surface attain a more attractive brown color. And we also want to get some crisp on the outside. Additionally, you can also coat the chicken by tossing it with the flour.
This thin, even coating of flour to prevents the food from sticking to the pan and also promotes browning. It also serves as a buffer between the heat and chicken so that it doesn't dry out. Thus preventing the food from becoming tough.
Excess moisture will cause the flour to get soggy, meaning it will not adhere properly to the chicken.
Remove the chicken from its packaging and pat the surface dry on both sides with paper towels. You can also leave the chicken uncovered in the refrigerator to dry it out. It sounds counterintuitive, but a dry surface will help the flour adhere evenly to the chicken.
The secret to succulent fried chicken starts with a marinade or brine, which keeps the chicken at its peak juiciness. Fried chicken traditionalists generally choose a buttermilk marinade while others swear by a brine, which is a mixture of sugar, salt and sometimes spices dissolved into water.
First, the fillets, which apparently come out the refrigerator fresh, are dunked in a bucket of cold water. "We dip it in there because it just helps the flour adhere to the chicken," Lawson explains. Then the fillets are covered in the breading mix, and then loaded onto a rack that is lowered into a vat of hot oil.
Frying. Both flour and cornstarch will fry foods, but they do have slight differences. Flour will do just fine as a breading, but it won't get as golden and it doesn't quite achieve that coveted crispiness.
The trick to getting the batter to stick to the chicken pieces properly is to dip the chicken into the seasoned flour, before dipping into the egg mixture. The flour helps the egg mixture adhere to the chicken. Then dip the chicken back into the flour mixture.
You'll get a day out of the chicken itself (supposing it is in air tight storage) but the flour will lose its purpose. The chicken juices will make the flour into a paste and then it won't serve to help make the chicken crispy, nor will it make a nice sauce thickener as it will be lumpy.
Fried chicken that is made using no flour is going to taste fairly different from fried chicken made using only egg and breadcrumbs. When you use flour to bread the chicken, it's going to help to make the fried chicken crispy on the outside.
The cold water will shock your chicken and help keep some of the juices in during the frying process. This is the crispiest, spiciest, homemade fried chicken I have ever made! It is equally good served hot or cold.
Too much flour will give you a soggy crust, so dredge the chicken once and keep the coating light.
But baking powder doesn't only make fried chicken crunchier—it also magically gives nonfried chicken extra-crispy skin. An example of this is our Oven-Fried Chicken Wings, which aren't fried at all. But when you bite into one, you would think it was.
It's actually protein. In some cases, when chicken is processed, a low-salt solution (less than 1 percent salt) is added to the meat to retain moisture and tenderness, and avoid the possible negative effects of overcooking. Sometimes, proteins are dissolved into this salt solution, and end up cooking out.
The calcium in the milk is thought to jump-start a natural enzyme in the chicken, which acts as the tenderizer. Cooking the chicken in the liquid further infuses it with moisture and flavor.
Marinate or brine your chicken: For really juicy chicken, marinate or brine the chicken before cooking. Marinades and brine solutions are really easy to make at home.
This helps the main coating stick to the food at the final step. The egg is necessary because it acts as a sticky glue to attach all of the breadcrumbs to the surface of the food. When the egg proteins cook and solidify, the breadcrumbs are secured onto the food.