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My Ultimate Super Crispy Fried Chicken Recipe that is super duper crispy, juicy and the batter never falls off the chicken so each bite is crispy to the end!

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My ultimate crispy fried chicken recipe has only 3 main requirements.

It’s has to be super crispy
The crispy skin cannot fall off the chicken easily, or with one bite.
It must be juicy (not dry or rubbery)

Through many trial and errors and testing I finally have a super crispy fried chicken recipe I truly love and the best part is, I have documented too! No more fiddling with pages and pages of different crispy fried chicken recipes and puzzling pieces together in my head.

The super duper best part is I no longer have to do a experiment and test a gazillion crispy fried chicken recipe test batches anymore. I kid you not, I have tested and fried so many different batches of chickens that I feel like the house smells like a takeout joint 😛 but this was definitely worth it.

INGREDIENTS

For this Super Crispy Fried Chicken recipe, try to find potato starch. While testing with all purpose flour, corn starch – I found potato starch can withstand a much higher temperature without becoming super dark or burnt. If you deep fry a lot, it’s worth it to keep a stash around the house.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

A Brine is Must for Juicier Chicken (Completely Optional On Lazy Days!)

For the spices in the brine, you can pretty much go nuts. I like to add fresh garlic and a few bay leaves to keep things simple but if you’re feeling fancy, you can definitely add more exotic spices in as long as the salt to water ratio is 3-4 tablespoons to 8 cups of water.

I keep this step optional because not everyone will want a juicy chicken and not everyone has the time to brine but whenever I fry chicken I definitely brine my chicken for a minimum of 4 hours.

A Mix of Wet Batter & Dry Mix to Get the Ultimate Crispiness

I’ve tried different methods to get a crispy batter and the results did not really satisfy me.

Using only a dry mix to coat the chicken (and nothing else), gave me some crispiness but not enough and the crispy bits actually flaked off very easily so there was nothing for the sauce to stick to.
Using an egg batter gave me a gummy result.

So I just decided to use the dry mix that we are already creating, and just add additional spices, vinegar and water to it and lo and behold it worked amazingly! 🙂 It’s a thin batter and it’s meant to be just a thin coating.

How to Prevent the Batter From Falling Off the Chicken

Make sure you dry the chicken REALLY well (with paper towel or air dry) right before you lightly coat it with the dry mix. This is a SUPER IMPORTANT step. Many people don’t mention this small minor detail but it makes a world of difference when it comes to making the crispy part stick to your chicken and well worth the effort if you don’t like your batter coming off easily and enjoy every bite of chicken to be crispy.

Crispy Fried Chicken Recipe Prepping — I found using tupperware much easier than paper or plastic bags to coat chicken

Once the chicken has been dried out, we are ready to lightly coat the chicken with the dry mix to remove the moisture from the skin even more from the starch and so that the wet batter will have something to actually cling on to and not just wick off the slippery skin. It’s important that you do a light coating only and shake off any excess mix – it’s meant to be a thin layer for the batter to stick to if this layer is too thick the wet batter will not stick to the chicken. Once it is lightly coated, let it sit for about 5 minutes

A Thin Coating of Batter Coating Goes a Long Long Way

Unless you like a thick batter coating on your chicken, a thin coating of batter will go a long long way. Make sure you let it drip off as much excess batter as possible! Too much batter on the chicken also gunks up the dry mix and makes it clumpy which can potentially just fall right off during the deep frying process.

Note: If you do end up with too much batter in your dry mix and you find that it is clumping up into chunks, you can just run your fingers through the dry mix and smush the clumps up with your fingers to break them up into smaller pieces so that it is easier for it to stick to the chicken again.

Why It Is Important For Your Chicken To Rest After Dusting it

While the chicken is resting, it is essentially drawing out the moisture out of the chicken which slightly dampens the dry layers. You’ll notice that coating becomes almost dough like – this will help you not lose all the batter into the oil during the deep frying phase. Letting your chicken rest is an important step so that your batter sticks even more to the chicken. If you don’t have 20-30 minutes to spare – at least let it rest for 10-15 mins.

Letting the chicken rest also brings up the temperature of the chicken so that it is not super cold in the centre. Dropping cold chicken into hot oil can drastically drop the oil temperature quickly as you deep fry as well, which is not ideal since a colder oil might mean an oil logged fried chicken.

Deep Frying Temperature & Oil

For this crispy fried chicken recipe, temperature is important. I ate a whole lot of burnt crispy chicken with raw insides this year (blech) and I found that my biggest issue was the outsides were always cooking faster than the insides so I was getting a lot of dark brown (borderline burnt) crispy chicken with raw insides.

Oil Temperature at 340 degrees – This gave me a greasy feeling chicken, it was essentially oil logged. It was crispy, but not super crispy but the batter was not burnt and my chicken was cooked all the way.
Oil Temperature at 350 degrees – This was just right. It gave my chicken a non-greasy feeling and it was super crispy, golden brown and cooked perfectly through to the centre
Oil Temperature at 360-375 degrees – This made my chicken super dark on the outside sometimes burnt and raw on the inside. My chicken would become dark brown within 3 minutes which is not long enough for chicken to cook all the way through.

What Type of Oil Do You Use to Deep Fry?

For deep frying, I like to use canola or corn oil, this is not limited to just this crispy fried chicken recipe – I use it for any type of frying I have to do. I have not tested with peanut oil yet (but will soonish!). Peanut oil has a super high smoking point, which makes it the ideal oil to deep fry with but to be honest it’s a very expensive oil and if you deep fry often and change the oil all the time the bill can add up! I also want to keep in mind that there are a lot of peanut allergies out there and since a lot of deep fried foods are meant to be shared, it’s something to keep in mind when using it. 🙂

In Short – Here Is The Process For My Super Crispy Fried Chicken Recipe

Marinade/Brine Chicken (Optional)
Dry Chicken Well
Dust in Dry Mix (and let it rest for 5 minutes)
Dip in Wet Batter
Dredge in Dry Mix Again (and let it rest 20-30 minutes after)
..and Deep Fry! 🙂

This crispy fried chicken recipe works well with wings too! 🙂 Woohoo!