This was my official first attempt at fried chicken, but because I had seen my Auntie Millie make oven fried chicken for my Dad's birthday this year I had faith. She mentioned an important step is making sure the oil is very hot before you put the chicken into it. A second key point was bringing the chicken to room temperature before putting it into the oil. All of these steps are to prevent the batter from being soggy.
Skin vs. Skinless::
So one point I couldn't budge on was having skinless chicken. I don't want to be preachy, but chicken skin is one the least appetizing things I can think of...that must come from deboning and skinning the chickens myself. After researching dozens of websites, and digging through redneck propaganda, it seemed that fried chicken would be just fine without skin.
What type of oil::
Second point--I was not about to use Crisco, butter, or lard, to cook with in large quantities. I probably would have used peanut oil, but here's the long and short of it: we bought way to much food at Costco for the wedding. Two jugs of olive oil to be exact. I used olive oil.
:: I looked through many, many fried chicken recipes, and compiled the best of everything. ::
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Ingredients:
Healthy chicken--look for air chilled, humanely raised, no antibiotics used
Brine--you can find many recipes for this online
Cultured buttermilk
Glutino Gluten Free Bread Crumbs
Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
pepper
garlic salt
olive oil
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1) Brine:: After preparing the chicken, cover it in brine overnight. When ready to cook, rinse the brine off the chicken and pat dry. {If you are doing skinless, remove the skin before setting the chicken in brine}. If the chicken is too wet, it will prevent the buttermilk from sticking.
2) Pour cultured buttermilk into a bowl.
3) On a large plate, prepare bread crumb/flour mixture:
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Glutino Gluten Free Bread Crumbs
Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
Ground Black Pepper
Garlic Salt
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4) Fill a cookie sheet pan about halfway with olive oil, place in oven, and set temperature to 400 degrees. Do not put anything in the oven until preheating is done. This will ensure the oil is hot enough before putting the chicken on the pan.
5) Dip the chicken in the buttermilk, and let all the access drip off.
6) Roll the chicken in the gluten free flour/breadcrumb mixture.
7) Using metal tongs {this is a must!}, gently place the chicken in the hot oil. Be very careful with this step. After this point I never removed the pan from the oven rack, far too dangerous. Anyone who has ever been burned by oil knows that this is very serious. Whenever I had to turn the chicken, or add or remove pieces I gently slid the oven rack to the "out" position, where it was still stable. Make sure to also not put your face too close to the hot pan, as the oil does spit rather far sometimes.
8) After the chicken has been in the pan for about two minutes, using the metal tongs, I gently shook each piece to prevent it from sticking to the pan. Put back in oven and cook for about 15 minutes. You're looking for the flour mixture to reach a golden brown color.
9) Before you flip each piece, gently shake it again to undo any sticking to the pan. Turn each piece. Let cook for at least ten more minutes.
10) If you're cooking drumsticks you may have to flip them onto a third side. If you do, just cook it long enough to get the flour mixture golden brown.
11) Finally, pull out each piece and place on a wire rack to let the oil drip off. Do not remove the pan from the oven yet. Leave it in the oven till it cools off.
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