How to Make Perfect Crispy Fried Chicken

Introduction

This golden crispy fried chicken stays crunchy on the outside while remaining tender and juicy inside. Using an easy home-style frying technique, you can achieve perfect texture and flavor without overcooking the chicken.

Making Crispy Fried Chicken at Home

This may be controversial, but I like to use boneless chicken thighs, which have a lot of flavor in the thigh. It has some fat, and it doesn’t dry out as easily, and when you fry it, it gets nice and crispy.

Ingredients

Chicken

• Chicken thighs, boneless, skin-on

Brine Ingredients

• Buttermilk
• Hot sauce (Louisiana hot sauce mentioned)
• Garlic powder
• Salt

Dredge Ingredients

• Flour
• Salt
• Black pepper

Frying

• Oil (type not specified)

People may say, “Chef I,” why do I do it boneless to get a nice crispy crust and cook it all the way through? I like to take the bones out. If you like chicken bones, I will make them myself. This recipe still works; you just need to cook it a little longer. Now it’s time to take my chicken thighs, boneless.

How to Clean and Cut Chicken Pieces

Fried Crispy Chicken thighs, skin on

This is a sturdy boning knife. What I like to do is open it up along the bones, run my knife under the bone, and pinch open the bottom of the bone.

Remove any cartilage, trim any excess. I want the skin on, but I don’t want to cut it in half too much, and I think it’s a better cut. Now some people might argue Oh, this is just a nugget or a chicken finger but chicken fingers and nuggets are not made with thighs; it’s skin on it is not a nugget.

This is not a chicken finger. I stand by my word, ok, my chicken is ready now, it’s time to make my brine. fitflavorplate

Making Brine for Crispy Fried Chicken

Brine is basically a salt solution that we are going to marinate in salt water. It will add flavor, and it will add some saltiness and seasoning, which will help our chicken retain moisture.

What I like to do is mix my brine in a bowl before I add it to my chicken to make sure all my ingredients are really well distributed, and what I have is buttermilk. Now, buttermilk is a cultured milk; It has a lot of acidity.

It has some softness to it. I also like to add hot sauce to my mixture, and this is Louisiana hot sauce. I think it tastes great. you can use whatever hot sauce you have, Garlic powder now, you will say Hey, Chef, you are a fancy chef why are you using garlic powder.

And I think garlic powder works.

It adds a little spice to the flavor that everyone is like I know this flavor, but I’m not sure what you put in here and then of course, the salt. This is a brine so we need a lot of salt. So once I put all these things in the bowl, mix it together so it’s really good, make sure everything melts, the salts melt in there, and we don’t have any big lumps.

If you love crispy chicken, don’t miss our Crispy Chicken Wings Recipe for more delicious flavor.

MAKE A BRINE FROM THESE INGREDIENTS

“Golden Crispy Fried Chicken with Juicy Inside (Easy Recipe)”

How to Mix Brine and Crispy Fried Chicken.

Once it’s all combined, you can go all the way to the top. Make sure the chicken is covered in brine so, if you need to make a little more, make a little more.

The chicken sticks to itself when you put it in the bowl, so if you don’t move it around, you’ll end up with the brine on the outside and in between those two pieces of chicken, So I like to just mix it in to make sure my chicken is really, really, well-mixed.

Pintrest

The most important part of the marinating process is letting it sit. I do it for at least 12 hours. If you don’t have 12 hours, that’s fine, but if you want to maximize the juiciness and tenderness of the chicken, you need to refrigerate it for at least 12 hours.

Process To Dredge Fried Crispy Chicken

The chicken has been marinating for 12 hours, and now we are going to do the soaking. Basically, we are taking our wet chicken and coating it with dry flour. The whole point of doing this dredge is that the flour mixture is going to coat our chicken with a nice crispy crust to lock in the moisture so that the chicken is fried juicy.

The first thing I want to do is season my dredge. I am going to add about two tablespoons of salt here. If you don’t add salt to the dredge, it will be a little bit milder. And then I have freshly cracked black pepper. I like to use milder for the dry ingredients. It distributes things well and then.

How to Dredge Fried Crispy Chicken.

We can take our chicken out of the brine and put it straight into the dredge because the brine is kind of sticky. I want that to help. I want the brine to stick to the flour on each piece of chicken, so I gently take it out and put it in the flour mixture.

Fried Chicken Crispy outside juicy inside

Mistakes to Avoid While Dredging

Don’t just start dredging too much chicken here. I do two or three pieces at a time. If you put too much chicken in at once, our dough gets really messy, and it’s really hard to work with a thousand pieces there.

I won’t be able to coat it well make sure we get it into all the cracks and crevices and give it a little shake and then we’re going to put it on the rack, I like to use the rack for this part because it allows the dredge to absorb the moisture from the chicken evenly, I try not to let them touch too much.

So we’re going to let this first dredge of flour soak into the chicken, we’re going to let it sit so that the dredge is a little sticky and wet, and this will ensure that our crust doesn’t slip off the finished piece of chicken if it’s wet and sticky.

Don’t worry it’ll be fine because I’m going to do a second dredge before frying so we get that really nice thick crispy crust one important thing is don’t get rid of your dough at this point some of the salt water that fell in there has gotten wet and we’ll get these nice little lumps it’ll be great when we give our other pieces to dredge.

So we’ve finished the first dredge of the chicken, we’re going to let it sit here for about 25 to 30 minutes, which gives us plenty of time to set up our fryer.

How to Fry Crispy Fried Chicken

Perfect Crispy Fried Chicken

We have our chicken that has absorbed that first dredge. We have our dredge, and we have hot oil. I chose to use cast iron pans because they are really thick and hold the heat when you fry, so sometimes when you put the chicken in the pan, you get a drop in temperature, and it makes your chicken greasy, and we put it on the heat.

Ideal oil

Temperature

350OF to 375OF

And maintain a nice even temperature throughout the frying so I’m taking my chicken you can see it’s nice and sticky I’m going to put it in the second dredge I’m going to take those nice big bits, those nice big bits give it a little bit of But don’t stir it too much because when we drop it in the fryer the dough will form our crust so if it splashes it will come away from us if you think it’s too much you can adjust your heat I think I’ve got a pretty good heat right now and we’re going to let it fry.

Once we start to see it browning on the bottom, we’re going to flip it. One of the most important things you want to look for when frying is bubbles.

If you see bubbles, it means the moisture is cooking, and it’s sealing that the chicken isn’t getting into the oil if you put it in the pan. And there are no bubbles, you’re going to get a chicken with a crumb, so you want to make sure you always have some bubbles.

Okay

So it’s been about four minutes, and we’re going to flip it so it cooks on the other side. I’m also flipping it so I don’t have to spray this batch, is ready to drain, it well so we’re not dripping all over the place on a rack.

The reason I want to put it on the rack is so it won’t sit in its juices and it’ll stay crispy if you put it on a plate the chicken will steam from the bottom and your chicken will be soggy and we don’t want to put it on the rack so it can drain well and then you fry your next batch if I don’t take that spot I’m going to dry it all out in the other spot. The wet one was actually going to burn, so the second dredge is a very important watch.

What’s up? I’m looking for brown on the bottom before I flip it over, so my chicken is fried. Look at this

It’s such a nice crispy crust on the outside I know it’s juicy in the middle because I brined. It I can’t wait to get it on a plate and eat it.

TASTING a Crispy Fried Chicken

It might take some time, a little effort, and a lot of love, but the result is totally worth it — just look at that chicken! It is gorgeous, who would not want to have a piece of this fried chicken put it up to my microphone.

Can you hear this? That is the sound of the Fried Crispy Chicken that wasn’t a big enough bite. Hold on, the crust is super crisp, the chicken on the inside is super juicy, and the seasoning is throughout the chicken.

Because we let it brine for 12 hours, I think this is the perfect fried chicken. I know frying home can be intimidating sometimes, but if you follow my method, you follow my technique, you are going to have a tender, juicy, and crispy fried chicken every single time.

👉 How is the recipe? Let us know in the comments — Perfect Crispy Fried Chicken!