SFAH Spicy Fried Chicken
I had to try it with and without the spicy oil to be safe
Although I’m not a spicy food person, I knew that most of the spice in this one was optional
Difficulty: 1/5
Time: 1 hr 35 minutes
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nostrat is a great book to read for anyone who is interested in cooking. By learning the basics, you can really make most things you would want to and make them better than the average cook. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that if you’re reading this blog, you should also read this book. Today’s recipe is one I’ve had my eye on for a while. Although I try to stay away from spicy foods, after looking through this recipe, it seems the spice is pretty optional. Similar to a Nashville hot fried chicken, this chicken its finished with a spicy oil, which I was thinking where most of the spice would come from. I’m always on the look out for a easy but good fried chicken recipe.
Key Ingredients and Omissions:
You can also just get your chicken thighs boneless
No ingredients were left out, I tried the spicy oil, but if you don’t like the spice you don’t need to make it.
Tools:
Fry/Candy thermometer
Dutch oven or other frying vessel
Cooking Review:
Deboning and Salting Chicken: 25 minutes
Instead of breaking down a whole chicken, I bought a pack of chicken thighs and removed the bones. It’s not as difficult as it may seem. There are plenty of tutorials online and the book even walks you though it. After all the bones were removed, I seasoned all the thighs with salt and put them in a bag overnight. This really helps the chicken maintain its juiciness and boost the flavor when compared to seasoning a few minutes before frying.
Dredging: 25 minutes
While the oil was coming up to temperature, I mixed the buttermilk and flour mixtures and began to dredge the chicken pieces. I started by coating each piece in flour, then the buttermilk mixture, and back into the flour before placing them on a baking sheet.
Frying: 45 minutes (5 batches (7-10 minutes per batch)
Frying was pretty simple. For most batches, I flipped the chicken about 6 minutes into the fry and then the chicken would be done after 3 or so minutes. Other pieces took longer, so just take the temperature of each piece before removing them from the oil to make sure they’re done. In the time the chicken was frying, I prepared the spicy oil, which smelled really good once the oil was added. As I can’t handle too much spice, I used half of the cayenne pepper that the recipe calls for.
Analysis:
To be safe, I tried one piece with the spicy oil and one without the oil. As far as the piece with the oil goes, it was lacking flavor. It was slightly sweet and I could definitely taste the cumin, but other than that, it was hard to taste much else. The spice definitely builds with each bite, so I would be careful going with the full amount of cayenne pepper. After tasing the oiled piece, I was really thinking that the chicken could benefit from being salted once it came out of the frier. On a more positive note, the chicken remained crispy with the oil on it. Interestingly, the piece without the oil was much better in my opinion. I could taste a lot more of the chicken and even the hot sauce that was used in the buttermilk mixture. It wasn’t spicy at all, but the flavors were just more apparent than the oil coated chicken. It seems like the oil just dulled most of the flavors and added the spice, which wasn’t worth it to me. It really tastes like a really high quality fast food fried chicken, which is a good thing in my eyes, given how many pieces you can get for the price/cost. Lastly, the chicken was decently crispy, but not super crunchy. Overall, I’ll give this recipe a 7/10. It’s not a hard recipe, but I definitely feel like the spicy oil was a miss. If it were just fried chicken without the oil, the recipe would have a slightly better score.
