Fried Chicken

[Qapla]

This thread was inspired by the picture of Bojangles' Fried Chicken in another thread. This is NOT a thread to discuss the evils of eating fried food, meat, chicken or buying "fast food" - it is intended to be           NOT        

 

Let's have some fun. Which is your favorite. Please keep in mind, this is for "already cooked chicken" so - saying "I prefer my own cooking" is not a valid answer/response. 

 

there are several brands named:

    

 

Or, you may have other brands where you live

 

   Enjoy the fried chicken   

Edited October 25, 2020 by rocket

[Pjdriver]

“Popeyes” chicken and “Churches chicken” are pretty good too. I not familiar with “Zaxby’s”,  or “Bojangles”....just the song, Mr. Bojangles   
 Must be the southern region of the US.  

[bagwell1987]

We have a market here, Oakies in Ocean Park, Wa, it has thee best crispy fried chicken I've ever eaten. I mean seriously,  big chicken pieces, brined in buttermilk, big crispy crunchy outside juicy inside. Oh man I could go for some chicken!!!

[Qapla]

Yeah - we have a place here named "Fryers Chicken" (Fryer is the owner's last name) and they make really good fried chicken.

[LoneWanderer]

I saw this topic and went all 

 

Fried chicken is not really a big thing in my parts of Europe although KFC has been trying to gain a slice of the local fast food market. A few years back whenever we would travel to our foreign language assemblies held in Germany I would make sure to go to KFC!  (My heart and arteries probably not thanking me for these choices...)

 

When I first saw the much-hyped Popeye's chicken sandwich, I was not impressed by the way it looked. But then I bit into it...and was hooked! Close to where we live we have hardly any fast food places and since I don't drive, I try to stop somewhere on the way back home from work.

 

Raising Cane's is gaining a cult following locally and while their Texas Toast and lemonade are really good, the lines are usually too long for me to bother stopping there. Although today I wish I had. Visiting my in-laws an hour plus drive from us there a Raising Cane's and a Café Rio right next to each other. While Latino foods hereabout are usually great quality, I was left bitterly disappointed and hoping I had gone to Raising Cane's instead...

 

I have seen this chain's locations a few times, usually (sadly) in run-down neighborhoods, but haven't had a chance to stop by yet. As long they are cheaper than Chick-Fil-A, or at least provide double the amount of food, I am happy 🐔

 

[bagwell1987]

All we have here is KFC, I call it pigeon in a barrel! Their chicken, compared to Oakies, is pigeon size. Imna have to go take some pictures for you all. I'll do that tomorrow, you won't believe it!

[Qapla]

Church's used to be known for their large pieces of chicken - although I have not eaten there for many years

[Margaret]

Used to eat at Belgrade Garden’s but it’s gone. Hopikin Gardens is still cooking chicken and making root beer, both in the Barberton Ohio area

[New World Explorer]

All chicken places converted here where I live to selling donuts, due to extraordinary demand ...LOL (so I can't comment on chicken ) 

[bagwell1987]

Donuts?? Seriously? Chicken is superior to donuts! Especially CRISPY chicken, ummmmm.

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Popeyes is the best I've tasted!

 

Unfortunately, they don't have any stores down here.

 

Old (Downunder) Tone

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Qapla]

 

There was one of these where we used to have assemblies - they had good chicken

[Hope]

I like Popeye's. Also Ezell's a Washington/ now Oregon franchise. 

 

I detest KFC.  Chick Fil A has a good chicken sandwich (minus pickle 🤢)

[Qapla]

  &  

 

have been added to the poll

[LoneWanderer]

Oh yeah, in this thread I mentioned

that I visited for the first time a few weeks ago. Within 50 miles radius from us they've got a few locations with some interesting sides to the fried chicken such as pork adobo rice. Mostly they are known as a Filipino chain with international presence. They know their market as I looked it up in the jw.org meeting search and within a similar 50 mi radius we have 16-17 Tagalog congregations 😱

[Katty]

I promised myself when I lost enough weight to reach my goal I'd eat a big box of Popeye's and gain some of it back...

then I realized where David lives, there's no Popeyes... and now I'm a little sad.

[bagwell1987]

Come over here, my chicken is better than David's chicken😆

[bagwell1987]

Incidentally, I made Mongolian chicken in the slow cooker today, it was kinda gray and meh, so I'm crusting it off and thickening the jus. Looking good.

[LoneWanderer]

20 hours ago, bagwell1987 said:

Come over here, my chicken is better than David's chicken😆

Hey Cheryl, that's the wrong direction for @Katty, I thought she was heading to Europe. Unless she does "a chicken stopover" and goes round the world the other way 

[bagwell1987]

I vote let's all take a trip and meet in the middle!!

[Honeybarrel]

We only have KFC here (and it’s free range chicken they use in the UK) so not much choice! Instead I make my own version which is actually baked. Don’t mock! It’s actually really really good and tastes like it’s fried:

 

I marinate the chicken pieces (I used boneless thighs) with buttermilk, maple syrup, and spices. I used paprika and cayenne. Salt and pepper.

then I blitz up breadcrumbs with grated Parmesan, some flour, and again spices including paprika, cumin and cayenne and pepper. 
toss the drained chicken in the coating and place carefully on greasproof covered oven dish and drizzle with olive oil and or knobs butter then baked for around 40 minutes. Super yum! 

 

[bohemian]

14 minutes ago, Honeybarrel said:

We only have KFC here (and it’s free range chicken they use in the UK) so not much choice! Instead I make my own version which is actually baked. Don’t mock! It’s actually really really good and tastes like it’s fried:

 

I marinate the chicken pieces (I used boneless thighs) with buttermilk, maple syrup, and spices. I used paprika and cayenne. Salt and pepper.

then I blitz up breadcrumbs with grated Parmesan, some flour, and again spices including paprika, cumin and cayenne and pepper. 
toss the drained chicken in the coating and place carefully on greasproof covered oven dish and drizzle with olive oil and or knobs butter then baked for around 40 minutes. Super yum! 

 

Sounds good, sis.  We have KFC here but lost of small kebab and fried chicken shops.  Nothing special in any of them.

[BLEmom]

The best part of fried chicken isn’t the chicken!

[Cushi]

I don’t eat meat but when I used to I liked Popeyes and Church’s. As an adult I could only eat Church’s spicy chicken because we ate Church’s dark meat so much growing up that it was hard to stomach eating it as an adult. I never liked KFC. The skin tastes weird to me.

 

Chic-Fil-A has a really good chicken sandwich but I heard the Popeyes sandwich is better.

Edited November 6, 2021 by *Jack*

[Pabo]

I make my own fried chicken called PFC, and it contains way much less salt then KFC.

 

If you want to know how much salt there is in KFC?

 

1kg salt per 12kg of breading flour, plus a 500gm of herb and spice mixed (which the main ingredient is salt, followed by MSG and pepper, then herbs and spices, followed by antioxidising agents and preservatives), and 250gm milk and egg powder. All these ingredients are combined and sifted twice and act as the breading mixture for the chicken. This breading mixture is usually prepared in a 60 litre tub that is about 700(L) x 350(W) x 250(D), which also used in coating the chicken

 

The chicken has been chopped into 9 pieces which is called a "head" which contains the 2 wings, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks, 2 ribs and 1 breast piece, and usually is bagged as 1 or 2 head bags. Then the chicken goes into a basket and is put into bucket (about 8L) water, swirled once around, lifted and then seven shakes. The pieces are then spread into the breading mixture and folded in that mixture 10 times (this is done starting from the left (L), center (C) right (R), and repeating 2 more times and the 10th is in the centre, thus it will be L,C,R,L,C,R,L,C,R,C. the pieces are then shake off the excess flour and put into "cages" in a specific order on each level, of the basket. The they are inserted into deep fried which are pressured and cooked for either 14 or 15mins (depending on the number of heads that have bee inserted). Once cooked the are pulled out of the cooker are then drained for about 30 secs before being racked out onto a tray and then inserted into a warmer ready for sale.

 

Even though it has been years since I have worked there, I still know how to cook it. At the time, they were using palm oil as their cooking oil. I'm not sure what they use now.

 

However, with my style of fried chicken (PFC), I mainly like using wing pieces as they are cheap to buy and much easier to cook evenly, and make great snack size bites when entertaining. However I cut them into 3 pieces, the "drumette", the forearm (the piece with two bones), and the wing tip. It is entirely your choice to cook the wing tips, but they are crunchy and you could eat it bones and all, as the bones will be very small. But you may be even able to buy the wings already cut into the drumette and forearms already with no wing tips.

 

As the typical home deep fryer usually only holds 2 or 3 liters of oil, you can do small batches cooking and you prepare the next batch of coating. I may only do full 3 wings or 7-9 cut pieces as a batch for cooking. But if you have people to help you, you can all have the fun in doing this.

 

Also, I don't use milk or egg to coat the chicken. So if you have people that have issues with dairy or eggs, this is perfect for them.

 

For my breading of the chicken, I do a "double" breading method by doing the following:

 

For the breading mixture, I use various seasonings where it changes depending on what I want to do, but the basic mixture is mixed herbs, garlic salt, lemon pepper, white peeper, black pepper, paprika and turmeric powder. As a starting point, have a teaspoon of each, then change it according to your liking, either by changing what you use, or add anything else like dried crushed chilies. But you will need abot a 6-8 teaspoons of seasoning to be added to the next part. You then add these to a 50/50 mix of flour (plain or SR or wholemeal) and breadcrumbs (about 150gms of each making 150gms).

 

To coat the chicken I use a basket that gets inserted into a pot of water, spin the basket round once, lift up and drain with a couple of shakes. Mix the chicken into the breading mixture till the pieces are coated (I do not use a 60L tub, but it may hold 10L)

 

Put the coated pieces into the basket (which I have sitting outside the water) and dip it in the water and lift it back straight out. No spin or shaking. Let it drain and put the chicken back into the breading mix and then coat the pieces again.

 

Once coated put aside or into the deep fryer basket to be cooked.

 

If you are finding that you are needing to top up the breading, I found that you may only need to add the flour and maybe perhaps some bread crumbs to the mixture and mix it thoroughly, as the herbs seem to not be sticking as much to the pieces. Also too, if you have any excess mixture left, you could sift it to remove the lumpy bits out, put it into a sealed container and put it in a freezer to use later.

 

Method of deep frying - and there is a method to this madness:

 

Set your deep fryer at 179 degrees Celsius (355F), insert the chicken and let it cook for 1 and 1/2 mins.

Then turn deep fryer temperature down to 161 degrees Celsius (320F) and cook for further 5mins.

Then turn the temperature back up to 179 degrees Celsius (355F) and cook for a further 1 min.

Then lift the chicken out and let it drain for about a minute, before putting it either onto a rack or paper to allow for further draining.

Keep in a warm oven (or under heat lamps) before serving, or let it cool down before refrigerating. (These are awesome when cold too, great for picnic lunches or parties)

 

The reason to the method of madness to this frying is what I had learnt from the cookers they used at KFC. This can be applied to any other thing you may use a deep fryer for. As every deep fryer may be different, you may need adjust your cooking times/temps that gives you the best results. But the reasoning f the methodology holds out regardless in any case.

 

The first 1.5 mins is to flash the coating of the chicken to set it to be crispy. Secondly, as there is a cold product into the oil, the fryer will detect this to automatically turn the element on quicker to compensate for the drop of oil temperature due to the chicken, thus getting the oil hot for the next stage.

 

The second cooking period it to cook the internal meat of the chicken, but also not to over cook the bread coating of the chicken. By the time the deep fryer has recovered from the sudden flash coldness of the chicken, the temperature for this longer cooking period would be about right at the start time.

 

The last cooking period is for several reasons, to make the oil hotter so the oil can easily off the chicken, when pulled out. Secondly to re-flash the coating of the chicken to keep it crispy. Lastly to get the oil ready for the next batch of chicken that may be inserted.

 

There you have it, the ins and outs of cooking some awesome fried chicken. I use the same recipe and methodology when cooking calamari rings, fish fillets, but I adjust the middle cooking time depending on what I am cooking.

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Pabo