How to Cook Fried Chicken

How to Cook Fried Chicken
All right, we are back to show you the procedure for Southern Fried Chicken and I've got a chicken that I had sitting in the refrigerator after it had been breaded. Again, we soaked it in buttermilk for approximately 3 hours, I re dredged it in some highly seasoned flour and this is what the chicken looks like before it is actually fried. I've got a non-stick pan here that I like to fry chicken in. It's got a higher edge on it which is kind of nice and a real solid base on it. It gives real even heat distribution. As you can see in the inside, I've got it about this deep which is a vegetable Canola oil mixture. You can use whatever oil you want to use to fry in but we don't want it so deep that you are actually deep frying. Southern Fried Chicken is actually done in a smaller amount which is what we are going to do today. So to make sure that your oil is hot enough, first of all we don't want it so hot that it is smoking. That's a bad sign. Sometimes I will just take a little bit of flour and throw that in and once the flour hits the oil and starts to sizzle immediately, some folks like to sprinkle a little bit of water in there and soon as it pops you will know that you are there as far as that goes. So we are ready to go folks and I am going to throw in some chicken pieces and get this going on. As you notice this has started to sizzle immediately as soon as it hit the oil which is what we are after. These cumberson pieces kind of like the drumstick and such, we are going to have to turn those with our tongs as they cook along. The flatter pieces will probably only have to turn twice. When I say the flatter pieces I am talking this thigh I just threw in and this chicken breast here. I'm going to throw these skin side down first. So what's going to happen is we are going to let these fry on one side and flip it over on the second side. We will come back and show you what they look like once they are done with the frying procedure. What I am going to do is finish them off inside my counter top toaster oven here which is actually a little convection oven in a toaster and broiler as well. If you don't have that, you can actually finish it off inside of the oven and we will come back and show you how to do that if you don't have one of these counter top units and need to finish it off in the oven. We will also show you the partially finished product when we return.