Bacon aside, there are few things I love more than fried chicken. What can possibly be more soul satisfying than a moist flavourful piece of chicken encased in a thick, crunchy crust? Not much, I say.
Yet despite my affinity for fried chicken, the crispy skinned allure of Colonel Sander’s Original Recipe overruns my better judgement a few times a year. Every time I step foot into a KFC to sate my hankering, I feel a twinge of hypocrisy, and yet I’m at the mercy of the fast food fryer. Well today, I said enough is enough, and I set out to come up with the best buttermilk fried chicken recipe. A fried chicken that the Colonel himself would swoon over, with a thick, crunchy, aromatic crust, and a tender juicy interior that’s infused with flavour, right down to the bone.
I know, this is a bold statement. Some may even call them “fightin’ words”, but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think I could back it up. If you’ve been following along for any length of time, you know I have a history of making audacious claims when it comes to poultry.
To make my ultimate fried chicken, I’ve employed a few tricks that I’ve learned over the years. The first is to brine the chicken. This is a must for any roast chicken, and it works equally well in fried applications. The fundamentals of brining are simple, you’re soaking the chicken in a salt and sugar solution that flavours the meat, much like a marinade would, while increasing the chicken’s moisture content. For my fried chicken, I decided to user buttermilk instead of water, and I stuffed it full of aromatics such as onion juice, garlic, celery seed and rosemary. After a night soaking in the buttermilk brine, the chicken is literally bursting with flavour, from the inside out.
Satisfied that I’d given the chicken the love and flavour that it needed, I moved onto the skin. In fried chicken circles, there’s much debate over how to get a nice crunchy crust. I’ve found the double dredge gets a nice thick crinkled crust that stays crunchy long after the chicken has turned cold (not that there would ever be chicken left on the plate long enough to go cold). Since the brine is quite salty, I avoided adding any salt to the flour, but that didn’t stop me from cramming in more flavour with spices like onion powder, paprika and more celery seed.
The last secret to making the best fried chicken is to let the coated chicken air dry for about an hour before frying it. This does two things. The first is that it gets the chicken up to room temperature, which helps it cook evenly once it’s in the oil. The second benefit is that some of the surface moisture evaporates, making the chicken crisp up nicely as it’s fried.
I won’t lie to you, this is a rather involved recipe that takes some time, but it’s not impossible to make on a work night if you put the chicken in the brine the night before. I like serving this with fluffy biscuits and plenty of honey to drizzle on both the biscuits and chicken.
Other Favorite Chicken Recipes
Units
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon celery seed
- 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
- ½ teaspoon black peppercorns
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 cloves garlic (finely grated)
- ½ small onion (finely grated)
- 2 cups buttermilk
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 4 whole chicken legs
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 2 teaspoons paprika
- 1 teaspoon ground celery seed
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 Litre vegetable oil (for frying)
Instructions
- Put the celery seed, rosemary, peppercorns, and bay leaf in a spice grinder and grind. Add the spices, onion and garlic into a gallon sized freezer bag with the buttermilk, salt and sugar. Seal the bag and shake to combine. Add the chicken legs and seal the bag, pushing out as much air as possible, so the chicken is submerged in the buttermilk. Refrigerate overnight.
- In a gallon sized freezer bag, combine the flour, onion powder, paprika, celery seed and black pepper and shake to combine. Remove the chicken from the buttermilk brine and use paper towels to dry off the chicken and remove any extra bits of spices. Add the dried chicken into the freezer bag with the flour one at a time and toss to coat. Shake any excess flour off as you transfer the chicken to a wire rack.
- Strain the buttermilk brine through a sieve to remove the spices. Dip the chicken in the buttermilk mixture then put each piece back in the bag with the flour and apply a second thicker coating of flour. Place the chicken on the rack and let it air dry for at least 1 hour.
- In a large heavy bottomed pot, add the oil. The oil should be at least 2″ deep. Heat over medium high heat until it reaches 340 degrees F. Carefully add the chicken to the hot oil. The temperature will fall a bit, and you want to keep the oil right around 320 degrees F for the duration of they frying, so adjust the heat source as needed. The chicken will take about 12-15 minutes to cook through and should be golden brown on the outside. You can use a meat thermometer to check and see if the chicken is cooked on the inside, but take the chicken out of the oil once before checking, or the juices coming out of the chicken will make the oil splatter.
- As the chicken is done, remove them from the oil and drain on a paper towel lined wire rack. Let the fried chicken rest for a few minutes and serve.
Natalie says
what if I full baked the chicken instead of partially fried and baked?
Marc Matsumoto says
You can bake it, but it will not turn out as crisp as if you fried it, you’ll end up with a bready exterior, unless you pour a good deal of oil over the chicken before baking, but at that point you’ll have negated any calorie savings of baking. If you’re going to bake the chicken you may want to consider using an egg wash and breadcrumbs instead of flour.
Su says
I’m making this tonight!!! It already smells soooooo good, just drying on the rack, before frying!!!! Thank you Marc!
Deborah Geary says
Marc,
Can I make the buttermilk fried chicken with chicken breasts?
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Deborah, you can use breast meat, but because it has a lower fat content it tends to dry out and will not be as flavorful as using legs.
SeitanicEater says
Hi Marc, I really like this idea/recipe. But as a vegetarian, I plan on tweaking it quite a bit and I’m not sure how well it would work…thought maybe you could help. I am thinking about using seasoned seitan in place of the chicken. I’m hoping that the buttermilk brine will enhance the flavor of the seitan the same way as it does chicken. Here’s my question: what does the buttermilk do? Does it improve the flavor, the texture or both? Do you think it’s pointless to use the brine and just go straight to the breading since I’m not using chicken? Thanks!!
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi SeitanicEater, Aside from the obvious seasoning it provides, buttermilk tenderizes the chicken, and together with the salt in the brine helps it retain more moisture. You’re most likely not going to see the tenderizing or moistening benefits by brining it in buttermilk, but I think it should help flavor the seitan (though I haven’t worked with the stuff enough to say for sure). I say try it and if it doesn’t seem to be doing anything you can leave it out next time.
Jeannie Irvine says
I don’t have time to marinate overnight. I’m thinking about marinating one hour, is that better than nothing?
Marc Matsumoto says
Yep, better than nothing, but you’re probably not going to get enough salt into the chicken with only 1 hour. You may want to add more salt into the buttermilk brine.
circahappy says
oh.. no.. you are killing me with this recipe. I am going to make it this weekend. Thanks for sharing.
John Ee Chee Hong says
Hi Marc Matsumoto, I cooked fried buttermilk fried chicken yesterday(not your recipe), I would just like to give my opinion that you can add a sidenote how to make the chicken taste better, usually i take chicken from freezer and cook and I went to supermarket and marinate it directly bypassing the froozen one and that supermarket has low quality chicken, but the fact is that it wasn’t frozen, it tasted better than most of the chicken i had from most supermarket i bought, tasted even better than some high qualities one. If you want to push your chicken soup recipe one step further, to qualify to be the best, every detail has to be looked into like using distilled water to make your chicken soup, may i also suggest to tell your readers or advise to use fresh ingredients. I am a fan of Japanese food and sushi has not much ingredients,basically seaweed and rice and maybe salmon or whatever fish they are using and what makes a good sushi?? It all boils down to the freshness. of course sushi still requires some technique like how you press the rice and wrap it in the seaweed but it is mostly the freshness that will make it standout from the rest.I am a Chinese and i eat lots of asian food, I can tell you one thing, fresh and not fresh can make a huge difference of the taste. I tried your terriyaki chicken recipe and it was the best ever terriyaki chicken recipe on the internet, not sure on this, but based on your description, it probably would be the best. I found out on your chicken soup here, will give it a try soon, so to sum it out, fresh ingredients is the most important factor and the fact I believe your recipe is good by reading it, fresh ingredients with your recipe will definitely make the best buttermilk chicken and best chicken soup recipe where money cannot buy unless you buy the ingredients and cook it yourself or get someone to cook it for you 🙂
Kristen says
I made this last night and it was ab-so-freaking-lutely amazing. It was my very first attempt at making fried chicken (a few months ago I finally bought a cast iron skillet and it has been getting lots of use!) and I just have to say your recipe has set the bar very high for any fried chicken I’ll eat from now on. When my husband and I took our first bites we couldn’t even speak because the flavor was just spot on. Thanks for such a great recipe! It’s a definitely “bookmark and make again and again” kind of dish. 🙂
Sherry Perry says
can you double or triple the recipe? Also, is there a printer friendly version?
Thanks…anxious to try it!
Marc Matsumoto says
Hi Sherry, yep, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t triple it, though you’ll either need to use a bigger pot to fry it or fry it in more batches. As for a printer friendly version, unfortunately I wrote this recipe before switching to a recipe plugin that supports printing, that’s why there’s no print option. Just cut and paste the recipe portion into a text editor and print from there.
Gary Molotov says
So I’m trying this later and I just thought I’d chime in and say something every single one of your recipes I’ve tried I think I’m at about 20 or more I’ve tried not one has disappointed but alot of recipes I can’t make due to liquor laws in Canada and lack of stock at liquor stores of forign wines and such and just go to replacement for them ?