The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 1084

crust that was lighter and crisper, with increased surface area (and we all know that more surface area = more crispness, right?) Finally, I used a trick that a friend, a former employee of the Chick-fil-A Southern fast-food fried-chicken chain had told me about He’d mentioned that once the chicken was breaded, the later batches always come out better than the earlier ones as bits of the flour mixture clumped together, making for an extra-craggy coat Adding a couple tablespoons of buttermilk to the breading mix and working it in with my fingertips before dredging the chicken simulated this effect nicely.† † Adding buttermilk to the dredge creates the extra-craggy surface on the left The last problem—the coating overcooking long before the chicken is cooked through to the center—was simple to solve Just fry the chicken until golden brown, then transfer it to a hot oven to finish cooking at a gentler pace The result is chicken with a deep brown, craggy crust that’s shatteringly crisp but not tough and that breaks away to meat that bursts with intensely seasoned juices underneath EVEN-CRUNCHIER FRIED CHICKEN? I was chatting with my friend the San Francisco chef Anthony Myint a while back, when he mentioned that whenever he has leftover fried chicken, he’ll fry it in hot oil again the second day, resulting in chicken that’s even better than it was the first day Normally there’s a limit to how much moisture you can drive out the coating on a piece of fried chicken, defined by how long you leave it in the oil Let it get too hot, and the exterior will start to burn But if you let it cool overnight, some of the moisture from the inner layers of coating will work their way toward the exterior When you fry it again the second day, this moisture is driven off, leaving you with an extra-thick layer of dehydrated coating around your chicken Not only is it a great way to treat leftovers, but if .. .the chicken is cooked through to the center—was simple to solve Just fry the chicken until golden brown, then transfer it to a hot oven to finish cooking at a gentler pace The result... and the exterior will start to burn But if you let it cool overnight, some of the moisture from the inner layers of coating will work their way toward the exterior When you fry it again the second... resulting in chicken that’s even better than it was the first day Normally there’s a limit to how much moisture you can drive out the coating on a piece of fried chicken, defined by how long you leave it in the oil Let