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We had fried chicken tonight.
It was good.
Marinate chicken pieces in a zip-lock freezer bag with enough buttermilk to cover.
Some hours later:
Mix three eggs, a third of a cup of water, and a cup of hot sauce (e.g. Texas Pete or equivalent) in a large bowl.
In another freezer bag put four cups of flour, two teaspoons of ground black pepper, two teaspoons of cayenne pepper, and two teaspoons of paprika.
Lay out the buttermilk-soaked chicken pieces onto something non-porous. Dust ‘em with salt, black pepper, and garlic powder.
Drop the chicken into the bag of flour. Bounce up and down until fully covered.
Take the flour-covered chicken pieces and put ‘em in the bowl with egg-and-hot-sauce. When they’re all covered with eggy-hot goodness, put ‘em back into the bag of flour and bounce ‘em up and down until really covered.
Put into a nice deep fryer full of 350-degree oil for 18 minutes (golden brown).
Serve with potato salad and iced tea.
Guess what I want for breakfast...
hot sauce (e.g. Texas Pete or equivalent)
That brand doesn't seem to exist at this end of the world so it's hard to tell what would be equivalent. The only thing in my kitchen that I would call hot sauce is Tabasco and a cup seems like an awful lot of that.
Texas Pete is a pepper sauce very similar to Tabasco. How much you want is in proportion to how many eggs you use, and that is in proportion to how much chicken you're frying.
You may find something on the shelf called "wing sauce" (various brands) which will do the job.
Buttermilk is a great brine for chicken. This sounds a bit like Nashville hot chicken, except there they use a lot more hot sauce. And like Deborah @ #1, now I want fried chicken.
Does this work just as well with any piece of chicken?
As an American to a non-American, could you tell me if there are any substitutes for a deep fryer? Like a deep pan with oil?
6
A deep pan with oil (and something to use as a cover, because the oil will splatter) would work fine. That's what a deep fryer is, really.
I have a deep skillet with a tall lid, called a 'chicken fryer'. But it isn't a 'deep fryer', being only about three inches (8cm?) deep.
Sounds tasty, though who has a pot full of hot oil sitting around at home?
By my count, you owe your readers four (4) apostrophes. Those ain’t apostrophes in front of them em’s!
John D. Berry @8:
You're right; and somewhere there's a Lisp program limping along without some backquotes.
Those are straight apostrophes in the post (and in this comment). What Moveable Type does with 'em is ... well.
Oh, yeah, and a big ol' cast-iron frying pan with about an inch (2.5 cm) of oil in it will work just fine for frying chicken. Complete workshop instructions here.
It works well with any piece of chicken from wings to split halves.
Can you combine #11 and #12, or does that give you Bottom-Half-Fried Chicken?...
When you've got bigger pieces of chicken and shallower oil ... you and tongs become friends.
If the thought of all that heat in the kitchen makes you even crazier (naming no HL names), and you've got an outdoor grill, do it there.
I concur with Jim @ 11 -- I always fry chicken in a deep cast iron skillet with 1+ inches of oil in it. I have a quick-read cooking thermometer to check the temperature. (It takes a lot longer to heat that much oil up to 350º F than I thought before I got the thermometer.)
Not that I have fried chicken recently. Though with this recipe, perhaps I will.
Sriracha might work for this; it's better than Tabasco as a sauce.
There's a brand called Frank's Red Hot that's my own favorite, but there are various brands of what's generically called Louisiana Hot Sauce that are both less hot and more flavorful than tabasco, too.
You can deep-fry in a pot or pan, don't even need that much oil (but if you use little, be aware that putting in the meat cools it significantly).
What I puzzle about: How large are your freezer bags? And how to you get stuff in and out without having the fine grain contents go everywhere? I cannot imagine the whole freezer bag sequence without imagining the kitchen to look in the end as if the cats got high on catnip and then got into the pantry.
@18
Frank's Red Hot is the basis for several recipes of mine. Tasty, tasty recipes. Now you've put them in mind, I think some of those might be appropriate for 4th grilling... maybe.
Inge@19:How large are your freezer bags?
We're talking 1-gallon size here. A common or garden variety Zip-Loc (or generic equivalent) bag will work just fine; it doesn't actually need to be freezer strength.
P J Evans #17: Sriracha is also much hotter than Tabasco and similar vinegar-heavy sauces.
Now I want to make my 3 pepper chicken bites.
equal parts srirachi and chipotles in adobo sauce, add cayenne pepper, oregano, cumin, coriander, ground bay leaf, garlic powder, onion powder and blend until smooth. cut chicken into one or two bite pieces and soak overnight or a minimum of 2 hours. (I don't have exact measurements yet. I just dump stuff in. )
dredge the chicken in flour mixed with salt and pepper. let sit until the flour absorbs the sauce.
bake in a 350 oven or fry in 1/2 inch of hot oil until done.
I think that a good Texas Pete equivalent is the Chipotle variant of Tabasco. It's more about flavor and it isn't as dedicated to setting your taste buds on fire.
22
It's common around here, but I generally don't need to add it to get enough heat in food.
Me @ 2: It seems my local supermarket is watching this thread when deciding on new product lines. Texas Pete's sauces - several varieties - are now only a short walk from my home. I was going to try this with sriracha (which is nearly as common as soy sauce in my part of Melbourne) but now I'll use Texas Pete's.
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