Buttermilk-Brined Fried Chicken

Normally I try to avoid food that is loaded with gobs of calories, fat, and sodium per serving. Not that I'm worried about having too much per serving, but that Rodney will have seconds (and maybe thirds) and I feel I should reel it in a bit. I'm not trying to kill him, after all. But sometimes, fried chicken just sounds real good.

A month or so ago I tried this recipe and before I was even finished frying the bird, knew I had to improve on my chicken breading and frying skills. Click the link for the original recipe and keep reading to find out how round two worked for me.

Buttermilk-Brined Fried Chicken

• 3 cups buttermilk
• 1/3 cup coarse salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 5 lb. whole chicken, cut into pieces
• 2 heaping cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• Soybean oil (about 1/2 a gallon)

In a 1-gallon resealable plastic bag set in a bowl combine the 3 cups buttermilk, the coarse salt, and sugar.


Cut up the chicken; cut chicken breasts in half crosswise to get 10 pieces. Here's a photo of my bird after I cut it up. I arranged the pieces to sort of reconstruct the body. From left to right: wings, top quarters of breasts, bottom quarters of breasts, thighs and legs.


Add all chicken pieces to the brine; seal bag.


Chill for 2 hours; remove chicken from brine and place it in a colander to drain a few minutes. Last time I did this, I put it on paper towels then tried to "pat dry" which led me to using half a Costco-pack of Bounty.


Put half your chicken (1 piece of each type) on a bed of about 4 paper towels and let them sit a minute. Flip them and put them on a dry spot for another minute. It's way easier than patting them dry. This photo shows the pieces I had just placed on the towel. Clockwise from top left: 2 breast quarters, leg, wing, and thigh.


Combine flour, the 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper in a medium bowl; transfer to a 9x13 baking dish. Place the 3/4 cup buttermilk in a bowl big enough to roll a leg in comfortably.

Coat chicken with flour mixture. Dip in the buttermilk; coat again with flour mixture. They'll look like this:


Meanwhile, in a deep, heavy Dutch oven, heat 2-2.5 inches oil to 350°F.

This takes a while, about 15-20 minutes. In the future, I will start heating the oil as soon as I pull the chicken from the brine. I should've realized that's what is meant by "meanwhile."

Using tongs carefully add the 5 pieces of chicken to Dutch oven. (Oil temperature will drop; maintain temperature at 325°F.) Fry chicken for 12 to 15 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink (170 degrees F for breasts; 180 degrees F for thighs and drumsticks), and coating is golden.

The amount of oil I used (about 2.5 quarts) was enough so all the pieces were completely immersed, which meant I didn't have to stand around waiting to flip them. You can sort of see that I put the chicken in a ring along the perimeter rather than plopping them all in the middle. After the first batch was in the "fryer" I breaded the rest of the pieces.


Place chicken in a metal colander on an oven-friendly plate, allowing oil to drain. Keep fried chicken warm in a 300 degree F oven while frying remaining chicken pieces. Fry the other second batch of five pieces.



Taste was fantastic as well as the appearance! It turned out much better than when I made it the first time. We had it with buttermilk mashed potatoes, corn, cole slaw and warmed garlic bread. (Sorry the plate photo is out of focus, Rodney was hovering and I may have been suffering from hypoglycemia).


Notes:

1. Breading the pieces in two steps helped a lot. The first time I did this, I breaded all the chicken at once and piled them onto a plate. By the time the oil was hot enough, the pieces were all glued to each other with wet breading. As I pulled them apart, some pieces ended up with bare patches and others had really thick breading. So thick the breading would fall off the fried chicken in a whole chunk when pierced with teeth/fork.
   
2. Frying in two batches resulted in more even browning since the Dutch oven was at capacity each time but not over full. There was room enough for each piece to fry without touching another. Last time I did this, I put 2 pieces of chicken in to fry on the first batch (due to a frying-chicken-for-the-first-time paranoia) and they were really brown; subsequent batches had 4 pieces each so they were more golden.
   

Cost:

• 5 lb. chicken: $0.69/lb = $3.46
• buttermilk: $3/half-gallon
• soybean oil: $8/5 qt.

So it cost me about $15 to fry some chicken. I have enough oil left to do it again, enough buttermilk leftover to make a variety of other things (I'm thinking pancakes!), plus leftover fried chicken.

Ultimately, it is definitely worth doing again. Now I have to remember to get a funnel to drain the used oil from my Dutch oven.

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