Homemade Fried Chicken

Welp, finally decided to jump in with both feet first  and try writing a blog about the food that we eat.  So firstly, I’d like to Welcome you and Thank you for checking it out! 🙂

Before I begin… I’d like to mention how much the many food bloggers in Vancouver have inspired me to give this a shot, I’m seriously addicted to reading their sites!  Seriously, just try and pry me away!   🙂

For my first post, we decided to try making some Homestyle Fried Chicken with Mashed Potatoes from scratch!   I gotta admit, when I was first told that was the menu, I was a bit worried (Okay okay…maybe I should let everyone know now that I cook maybe once…. a year lol) But homemade fried chicken??  Really?  Now I’m a big fan of Church’s fried chicken, the skin is absolutely delicious!  So with that frame of mind, this homemade fried chicken had a lot to live up to.

Ingredients

Mashed potatoes

7 bakers potatoes

Butter

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup water

salt & pepper

Chicken

Chicken thighs

2 cups buttermilk

3 tablespoon seasoning

thyme, paprika, garlic powder

2 tablespoon baking powder

salt & pepper

Mashed potatoes

Any type of potato will do but for this recipe we’re using bakers.

A heavy bottom pot is best to avoid burning the bottom

Step 1: Peel and cut potatoes into quarter’s just to help quicken the cooking time.

Step 2: In a pot, bring to boil 1 cup of water and 2 cups of chicken broth.

Into this pot you can add the potatoes and let it cook until tender (15mins or so)

Step 3: Turn off the heat and leave it sitting on the stove top to maintain its heat.  At this point, you may add the butter/salt/pepper

Start the mashing process gently as you don’t want the mixture to  splash out of the pot.

Add the milk in small incriments until you’ve reached the desired consistency.

It will naturally lose moisture over time so if you will be serving the mashed potatoes at a later time, add more liquid to compensate.

Step 4: Scoop desired amount onto plate.  (Adding chives and green onions are a personal favorite.)  Enjoy! 🙂

Chicken

Chicken thighs would be ideal for this recipe:

Trim and clean the excess skin fat from the chicken and score the bottom several times (skin side down)

This promotes more flavour, quickens the marinating process but also helps it cook much more quickly so it
doesn’t become dry

Step 1: Combine buttermilk and seasoning in a freezer bag.   Add in chicken pieces.   Let marinade
for 6-8hrs or overnight.

Step 2: Combine dry ingredients in another freezer bag. Flour/baking powder/dry thyme/seasoning/pepper/garlic powder/paprika/parsley flakes…..mix well

Step 3: Take the wet marinated chicken from the freezer bag and drain off excess liquid (just enough so that the
chicken still has a wet surface to absorb the flour mixture)

Dredge the chicken piece by piece  in the bag of flour and coat it well. Take your time with this.   Set aside once you’ve coated each piece of chicken.

Now before you place em into the deep fryer,  re-coat with the flour mixture before frying each piece for  that extra crunchy texture.  Dust off the chicken pieces well and place into hot oil.

Step 4: Total cooking time should not take more than 7mins depending on your burners heat.

Keep an eye on the color and have it darker or lighter depending on preference.

Step 5: Keep chicken aside after cooking on a cooling rack to retain its crispiness.

Step 6: Serve with mashed potatoes on the side.

And the verdict??

Definitely one of the best homemade fried chicken I’ve ever had!   The skin was extremely flavourful, I’d choose this over Church’s any day!  I only had 1 piece of chicken as I had just eaten congee for lunch, but luckily there was enough that I could save a piece for lunch today!   Mmm… fried chicken 🙂

Post by Colleen