| This is less of a recipe and more of a fried chicken tutorial. I have to be honest, I've tried making fried chicken so many times and failed miserably but I've learnt the hard way and can now produce pretty good fried chicken without any trouble at all. I have however yet to be able to discover the secret blend that makes KFC fried chicken, so if any of you manage to achieve that please email me I'd appreciate it. The first trick is to roast your chicken so that it is cooked but not beginning to brown off. If it is ever so slightly pink still in the middle that will be ok as there will be a final cooking in the fryer. If you do not precook the chicken then you will have a burnt batter by the time the chicken is fried. Places like KFC get around this by using a pressure fryer which cooks much more quickly and which is also how the final product can be very succulent except they then leave it to keep warm too long. Once cooked you will need to first dip the chicken in flour and then batter. The flour sticks to the chicken easily and the batter sticks to the flour in this way your batter does not fall off when you start frying (wish I knew that 20 years ago). For the flour and batter mixes you need to decide on flour combinations. Corn flour makes a very crisp but thin batter, wheat flour makes a very thick chewy batter so we combine the two in differing proportions depending on what we like. To start with go 50/50 then adjust as you prefer. Season the flour with salt and pepper (white or black or both) then add the herbs and spices you have chosen. Some good examples are dried sage, mace, cumin, coriander or you can use a curry powder and make "Madras Fried Chicken" - there are no limits. If you are adding MSG, put about 1 teaspoon per cup flour, unlike salt you can't ruin the taste by using too much. MSG has had some serious controversy but is now generally regarded as safe, Some snobby culinary experts will distain it but I personally think that if not overused it has it's place and for fried batters that is it's real reason to exist, it really enhances deep fried batters. Once you have your flour mix save some for flouring and keep some for making the batter. Do not mix all the batter up in one go, make it immediately before use in small batches. You are likely to be frying a few pieces at a time and batter will deteriorate as air escapes when left to sit. When mixing the batter with your chosen liquid make it runny and not too thick (again you can experiment here), do not over whisk the batter just mix enough so that liquid and flour are combined, lumps are ok. Now dip the floured chicken and deep fry at 190 degrees until golden, this should only be a few minutes. Do not overload the fryer just 2-3 pieces at a time and put the cooked pieces in a warm oven at 100 degrees to keep till it is all ready. Serve with chips and corn on the cob roasted with lashings of butter.
Update 13th November 2006
I currently tend to go for a 2/3rds Wheat flour 1/3rd cornflour mix and dip first in dry seasoned flour, then the batter, flour, batter then finally flour. Dipping last in flour gives a more craggy batter finish, last dip in batter gives a smoother batter so it is your choice. Last dip in batter will also keep your frying oil cleaner as the flour does not disperse into the oil. For my last batch of chicken I took some fresh sage leaves (about 50g or so) bruised them a bit and dropped in a jug, poured over boiling hot water and left to infuse and cool until the liquid was luke warm ( I added a couple of ice cubes near the end to speed the cooling ) I used this liquid to make the batter and it really worked well to add a great sage flavour. I will experiment a bit more with this way of herbing and spicing the batter.
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