Sunday, March 15, 2009

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Fried Chicken

By KC Kudra

It seems everyone likes fried chicken. All over the world, you will find recipes that combine this succulent mild meat with frying. From American fried chicken to the tasty nuggets you can find in Asia, frying chicken is something that is universal.

One of the latest versions to hit the States is Korean fried chicken. This lightly battered, delicately cooked treat is very different from the chicken you probably had as Sunday dinner. Cooked to perfection and then lightly painted with sauce, Korean chicken is quickly catching on. Most Korean chicken recipes are suited for the small chickens in Korea, not the large American birds. To compensate, either cut up boneless chicken meat into small pieces or just use wings.

Japanese and Chinese chicken are prepared in a similar fashion, but they use different herbs and spices. Both cuisines prefer to use boneless chicken. For a Chinese flavor, use soy sauce or five-spice powder. For a Japanese flavor, you can use wasabi, sake, or ginger. You can choose to serve these crispy chicken bits plain or with a sauce, which can either be poured over the top or used for dipping. Orange chicken, almond chicken, and lemon chicken all use breaded fried chicken as the basis of the recipe.

Fried chicken in India is made by rubbing spices like turmeric, fennel and mustard seeds, black pepper and udad dal into the chicken and letting it marinate. Then each piece is dipped in egg white, rolled in breadcrumbs, and fried in hot oil until crisp and golden.

People all over the world have their own version of southern fried chicken. By changing the spices and herbs, you can make a simple dish into one that reflects almost any cuisine.

South American recipes feature ingredients like lime juice, corn flour or corn meal, hot sauce and garlic. To make it more Italian, use crushed red pepper, oregano, garlic, chili powder, onion powder, dry mustard and add salt and pepper to taste. Cook it in olive oil.

You can also vary your cooking method to make this dish different. Oven frying is a great way to enjoy fried chicken without all the fat. Oven frying can still give you a crunchy chicken full of moist goodness. If you use skinless chicken, be sure to marinate it in buttermilk to help seal in the moisture. Add a coating of seasoned flour to seal in the flavor and provide a nice crispness to the outer surface. You will be very pleased with this low fat chicken meal that will taste as good cold as it was hot from the oven.

You can also use the tried and true method of putting oil in a cast iron skillet for frying chicken. This method can make the simplest of breading tasty and keep the chicken moist. There is something about cooking the chicken in a cast iron skillet that makes it incredibly crisp and delicious while still cooking the interior completely. This is the traditional way used for generations of cooks before the advent of deep-frying.

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