For KFC-like chicken (soft and tender, coating fried enough but not too much, moist and not too greasy) you can use this cooking method:
- use a trivet in a pressure cooker to steam (not boil) chicken portions in chicken stock for 25 mins at pressure. This means you're pressure cooking the chicken in steam.
- let the chicken cool
- make a wash of 2 parts buttermilk to one part egg white with 1 tsp vanilla essence per 250ml of wash
- dip chicken pieces in wash, then your breading mix, then wash then breading and rest for 2 hours in fridge till chicken has a wet appearance (no dry spots)
- deep fry 160C for 3 mins
- rest in low oven at 80C for 20 mins to warm thru
You'll have to use your choice of breading mix (refer to the KFC forum or improvise) but as a rule of thumb to one cup of flour add 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp msg, 2 tbsp mixed spices and herbs (pepper, sage, savory, ginger, coriander, cardamon, bay, cayenne, etc). Some well crushed cornflakes adds a nice texture to the coating but at the expense of absorbing more oil, so use judiciously.
In my experience anyone playing around trying to replicate kfc isn't short of their own ideas of what the spice mix should be, so knock yerself out! The cooking method is sound and makes the tenderest chicken without an over fried coating as happens if you try to deep fry coated chicken from raw. Don't fill your pressure cooker with oil unless you like hospital.
Topic: KFC Forum (read 10,338 times)
