Buttermilk Fried Chicken

This is the entree for my 2010 NYE dinner.  My friend Andrew who bought me the book specifically asked for this dish for the new year, I figure you can't go wrong with fried chicken no matter how badly you screw it up :)

For the chicken themselves, the recipe recommends two 2.5 - 3 lbs whole chicken.  Thomas warned that most grocery stores probably do not sell whole chicken that's so small, and he was right - when I shopped at my local market, the smallest I found was 2.8 lbs and the other was nearly 3.5.  I didn't have time to check at Wholefoods, but your best bet is probably at a farmer's market if you are close to one and can get it fresh the day that you want to cook this.

First step of this recipe is to make the brine that will actually marinade the chicken.  This is probably the most important step and one of the biggest reasons why the chicken turned out so juicy later after frying.  Make sure you don't skip this step even though it does add a little bit of complexity to the process.  The brine recipe included in the book is enough for marinading probably 10-15 lbs worth of poultry, since this is my first time, I didn't bother scaling this down for what I needed.  Next time I know I would not need nearly as much, I think I only used about 1/4 of the total brine.  The brine consists mainly of lemon, salt, honey, garlic and a variety of spices.

Dry ingredients for the brine.

Bringing the brine to a boil.

While the brine is cooking, I attempted for the first time - cutting 10 pieces out of a whole chicken as it's beautifully demonstrated in the book.  Well this was a LOT harder than it looked :)  You definitely will need a good pair of poultry shears as well as a boning knife of some sort.  Luckily I did have both.  Even then the process was a bit of a mess, cutting out the backbone took some strength, and separating the drumsticks from the thighs was also a challenge.  I had some practice of this from the many years of slicing turkeys for my family during thanksgiving, so some of the principles are the same, such as separating out the wishbone.  All in all I was satisfied with the result, and I was making good speed on my 2nd chicken, so I guess a little practice will make this second nature eventually.

The "10-piece-cut" from a whole chicken.

After the brine cools down completely, it was time to put the chicken into the brine and then refrigerate.  Ideally you should brine the chicken for 12 hours, but for my attempt, I only did about 6 hours since I didn't read up on the recipe ahead of time to know it required such a long brine time.  Before you are ready to fry them, take the chicken out and rinse with water then pad dry with paper towels.  (On a side note, paper towels are real life savers... I wouldn't know what to do with this recipe if I didn't have any!)  One word about food safety, since you are dealing with poultry primarily, it's important to keep everything separated so you don't cross contaminate things, this wasn't easy actually.  I was more or less paranoid so I washed everything twice to make sure.

Now onto the exciting part, frying!  The goal is to make an assembly line of some sort, dry-wet-dry station.  Dry ingredients contained variety of spices and flour, wet ingredient is the buttermilk.  I didn't understand why I needed two identical dry stations until when I realized later when I started to dredge the chicken into the mixtures.

Dry-wet-dry stations for preparing the chicken before frying.

Different pieces of chicken are to be fried at different temperatures according to the recipe.  This is probably the hardest part of making this dish.  Invest in a good oil thermometer, the one I had wouldn't read properly so after a while I gave up and used my oven one instead.  Thighs and drumsticks should be fried at 320F for about 10-12 min, while the breast and wings should be fried at 340F for only 7-8 min.  I think my friend and I managed to fry the thighs properly at the correct temperature, but for the drumsticks the oil got way too hot, this resulted in much darker looking pieces.  Putting multiple pieces in will also change the oil temperature so it's important to re-check the temperature before putting new pieces in.  It's also a good idea not to constantly pick up and rearrange the pieces once they are in, otherwise the coating could come apart from all the movements in the oil, especially at the beginning.

Chicken pieces frying in a regular Circulon pot.

Once the pieces are done, set them aside on a cooling tray lined with paper towels to absorb the excess oil.  I used a baking sheet and it worked well.  This is also a good time to season the outside with additional salt and pepper as needed (Emeril's rule of seasoning everything as they come out of oil does apply here).  For garnish, simply fry a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme.  Be careful, since there are some amount of moisture in the fresh herb, when dropping them in very hot oil, they could splatter!  After cooling the chicken off for about 10 minutes, it's time to plate and serve.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken plated.

Tasting:
The immdiate difference I noticed with this fried chicken was how incredibly moist the meat is.  I don't think I have ever had fried chicken where the meat was so juicy.  I believe this is the direct result of the marinade/brine along with the buttermilk.  The crust was very crunchy, a bit too crisp for my taste, but still very good.  As you can see from the pictures, the drumsticks were much darker in color than the rest because the oil temperature wasn't controlled perfectly.  In summary, these are some tasty treats and I will definitely be making this again and hopefully correcting some of the mistakes.