Fried Chicken: Yum-O!

So for my first real food post, I am going to write about the chicken I made for dinner tonight. It really kind of started with watching Food Network last night while I was trying to drift off to sleep. The were showing an episode of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate"  and the focus of it was, you guessed it- fried chicken.  I really took a liking to the idea of the offering from "Cha Cha Chicken" somewhere in California (Santa Monica, I think.) It was a juicy, crunchy, sweet and spicy version that was not your momma's chicken.  Don't get me wrong, I love good old fashioned fried chicken, but this was something more than that.  Besides, what's wrong with improving on an already good thing.

So my chicken adventure began.  I had already thawed a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which is my preferred chicken to cook with anyway.  The chicken I have already mentioned was brined with a mixture of Carribean spices and some OJ for a nice citrus flavor.  I didn't have all the ingredients on hand for exactly what they used, but I did my best.  I also didn't have a lot of time to brine the meat, so I got out one of my handy-dandy FoodSaver containers and started up my brine. 

For those of you who don't know what it means to brine meat, I will give you a crash course.  When you brine meat, you are soaking it in a brine, or salt water solution.  What this does is draw moisture and flavor into the meat.  It helps it stay super juicy when you cook it.  The only thing that you have to be careful of is getting the meat too salty.  I know this sounds contradictory, but trust me- you can get it too salty.  Be careful using added salt in the breading, sauce, stuffing or anything else that you are going to be serving.  Also, usually you take the meat out of the brine and soak it in plain cold water for about 20 minutes to draw out some of the salt.  (The whole process works by osmosis and diffusion- probably more technical than you want from me, LOL!) You can also add different flavors to the meat by adding in herbs or seasonings.

For this brine, I used about 1/8th cup of salt, 1tsp of cayenne, 2 TBS cajun seasoning, a generous sprinkling of black pepper, ground cloves, and allspice, 1 TBS lime juice and 2 TBS lemon juice. I mixed it with about 1 cup warm water to get the salt dissolved, and then set it aside in the canister. 

Now, I never really liked to make huge pieces of fried chicken.  I like to make them smaller, more like chicken strips so that you get plenty of breading.  Love that crunch! It also takes less time to cook the smaller pieces and there is a much smaller chance of burning the crust or serving raw chicken to someone. So, I trimmed the fat off of my chicken breasts and cut it into more manageable strips and dropped them into the waiting brine.  Once I had all the chicken cut up, I added just enough cold water so that I could move the pieces around fairly easily in the brine and made sure that it was mixed well.  I put the lid on the container and vacuum sealed it, promptly placing it in the fridge to soak. 

I let the chicken soak for just over two hours in the vacuum sealed container.  I thought that since I hadn't gotten to soak it for very long that I could skip the quick soak in plain cold water.  I was wrong.  The chicken turned out just a little too salty.  Do make sure that before you continue that you drain the brine from the chicken and cover it with plain cold water.  

You are also going to need a heavy skillet and some of the white, unflavored shortening. I learned to use shortening from Alton Brown (have I mentioned that I love the Food Network?)  The shortening will smoke to let you know if it's too hot, and it just fries chicken better than anything else.  I know it's not the healthiest choice, but we are talking about fried chicken here!  So, get your heavy skillet out (preferably with straight sides) or dutch oven out and set the stove eye to medium or medium high heat and add in enough shortening to come up about half way up the pieces of chicken.  You don't want to submerge the chicken completely.  If you do, the steam is trapped inside the meat and will make the breading fall off.

I did get together an egg wash ( 3 eggs and about 1/4 cup of milk, be careful not to make it too runny), and my breading.  Today I used about a half a cup of white all-purpose flour and about 2 cups of panko bread crumbs, with some black pepper sprinkled in.  Usually, I like to add some grated parmesan cheese to my breading.  It adds a nice nutty flavor to it, but I didn't have any on hand tonight.  Make sure that the breading is mixed together well and that there are no clumps of flour hanging around.   The next step is to drain the water off of the chicken and place a few pieces at a time into the egg wash.  Coat it well and then dredge it in the breading, turning it and making sure all the surfaces are coated well.  You can double dip the pieces for an extra crunchy coating, but it really isn't necessary if you are using panko. 

Ease the chicken into the hot grease.  It should start to sizzle when you put it in, not just sit there.  You should be able to tell that it is cooking.  Add in pieces of chicken so that you have several pieces in at a time, but you don't want them resting against each other.  When you can tell that they are starting to get brown on the bottom side, use a pair of metal tongs to gently turn the pieces.  You don't want to use a fork.   When both sides are golden brown, take them out and set them on a cooling rack positioned over a cookie sheet to rest and drain.  If you sit them on paper towels, it will make the crust soggy on the bottom side. Make sure you allow your chicken a few minutes to rest.  It allows the juices to set up inside the meat and also lets the crust set. 

You can serve this with a milk gravy,a  dipping sauce, or just as it is.   As an added note, this chicken was not spicy in the least.  I don't tolerate hot food well.  I think the only thing the meat absorbed during it's short brine was salt and water.

I hope you've enjoyed this recipe and be sure to let me know if you have any questions!