The Best Fried Chicken You'll Ever Make

The crunch says everything.

I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor,

and today I'm gonna show you how to make fried chicken.

With my method, you're gonna get crunchy, juicy,

tender chicken that's never dry.

This is Fried Chicken 101.

This might be controversial,

but I like to use boneless chicken thighs.

The thigh has lots of flavor to it, has some fat to it,

and it doesn't dry out that easy

and it gets nice and crisp when you fry it up.

People might say, Chef Frank, why boneless?

In order for it to get a nice crispy crust

and be cooked all the way through,

I like to take the bones out.

I'll bone them myself.

If you like bone-in chicken, this recipe still works.

You just need to cook it a little bit longer.

Time to bone out my chicken thighs.

This is a firm boning knife.

What I like to do is get in there alongside the bones,

open it up, pinch under the bone, run my knife through.

Save these for stock. Don't throw 'em away.

Get any cartilage off. Trim off any extra skin.

I do want skin on there, but I don't want a lot of extra.

Cut this in half,

and I just think it's a better portion size.

Now some might argue,

oh, that's just a nugget or a chicken finger,

but chicken fingers and nuggets

are not made with thighs with the skin on.

This is not a nugget. This is not a chicken finger.

I stand by my word.

Okay, my chicken is prepped. Now it's time to make my brine.

A brine is basically a salty solution

that we're gonna marinate our chicken in.

The brine is gonna tenderize, it's gonna add flavor.

It's gonna add some saltiness and seasoning

that's gonna allow our chicken to hold on to moisture.

What I like to do is mix my brine in a bowl

before I put it in my chicken

to make sure all of my ingredients

are distributed really well.

And what I have here is some buttermilk.

Now, buttermilk is a cultured milk.

It has a lot of acidity, it's got some tanginess.

I like to add hot sauce to my mixture as well.

This is Louisiana hot sauce. I think it tastes great.

You can use whatever hot sauce you have.

Garlic powder.

Now you might say, Hey, Chef Frank, you're a fancy chef.

Why are you using garlic powder?

I really think garlic powder

is a great convenience ingredient.

In order to get the punch that this gives,

I'd have to add a lot of fresh garlic.

And I think garlic powder does the job.

Some mustard powder.

Mustard powder might be one of those ingredients

that you're questioning.

I think mustard has a great sharpness to it.

It adds a little spice to this.

This flavor that everyone's like,

I know that flavor, but I'm not sure what you put in here.

And then of course, salt.

This is a brine, so we want a fair amount of salt.

So once I have all these things in the bowl,

just whisk it together so it's combined really nice.

Make sure everything melts,

the salt melts in there and we don't have any big lumps.

Once it's combined, all of this can go right on top.

Make sure the chicken is covered with brine.

So if you have to make a little more, make a little more.

Chicken when you put it in a bowl tends to stick to itself.

So if you don't move it around,

you're gonna have the outside

of these two pieces of chicken brined

and the center with no brine.

So I like to just mix it up

to make sure my chicken gets coated really, really well.

The most important part of the brining process

is to let it sit.

I do at least 12 hours.

Now, if you don't have 12 hours, that's fine,

but if you want to maximize that juiciness

and tenderness of the chicken,

you need at least 12 hours in the fridge.

The chicken has been brining for 12 hours

and now we're gonna drench.

Basically we're taking our wet chicken

and coating it with dry flour.

The whole point of doing this dredge

is that the flour mixture is gonna coat our chicken,

form a nice crispy crust to seal in the moisture

to ensure a juicy fried chicken.

First thing I wanna do is season my dredge.

I'm gonna add about a couple tablespoons of salt here.

If we don't add salt to the dredge,

it's gonna be a little bland.

And then I have some fresh cracked black pepper.

I like using a whisk for dry ingredients.

It distributes things really well.

And then we can just take our chicken out of the brine

and put it right into the dredge.

That brine is kinda sticking. I want that.

That's gonna help my flour stick to those pieces of chicken.

So just drain it lightly. Place them into the flour.

Word of caution here.

Don't just start dumping a lot of chicken in here.

I do two or three pieces at a time.

If you add a lot of chicken at once,

our flour gets really too clumpy

and it gets really difficult to work with.

A thousand pieces in there,

I'm not gonna be able to coat it really well.

Make sure that we get it into all the cracks and crevices.

Give it a light shake

and then we're gonna put it on the rack.

I like to use a rack for this part

because it allows the dredge

to evenly absorb the moisture from the chicken.

I try not to let them touch too much.

So we're gonna let this first dredge of flour

soak into the chicken.

We wanna let this sit

so that the dredge gets a little sticky and wet.

And this is gonna ensure that our crust

does not slide off the finished piece of chicken.

If it's wet and sticky, don't worry, it's gonna be okay

because I'm gonna do a second dredge before we fry

so that we get that really nice, thick, crispy crust.

One important thing here is not to get rid

of your flour at this point.

The brine that fell in there kind of wet some of the flour

and we got these nice little lumps.

This is gonna be great when we do our second dredge

'cause those lumps are gonna give us nice crunchy pieces.

So we've finished the first dredge of the chicken.

We're gonna let it sit here for about 25 to 30 minutes,

which gives us a lot of time to set up our fryer.

We have our chicken that has absorbed

all of that first dredge.

We have our dredge and we have our hot oil.

I chose to use a cast iron.

Cast iron pans are really dense and retain heat.

When you fry,

sometimes when you add the chicken to the pan,

you get a dip in temperature

and it makes your chicken greasy and soggy.

The cast iron lets us hold on to that heat

and maintain a nice even temperature throughout frying.

So I'm gonna take my chicken.

You can see that it's nice and sticky.

I'm gonna put it in for the second dredge.

I'm gonna get those nice big chunks, those nice big bits.

Give it a light shake, but don't shake it off too much

'cause that flour is gonna be our crust.

When we drop into the fryer, we drop away from us

so that if it splashes, it splashes away from us.

You can adjust your heat if you feel it's too high.

I think I got a really nice heat right now

and we're just gonna let it fry.

Leave it alone.

Once we start to see it getting brown on the bottom,

we'll give it a flip.

One of the most important things

that you wanna watch for when you fry is bubbles.

If you see bubbles, that means moisture is cooking out

and it's sealing that chicken in, oil is not getting in.

If you drop this into the pan and there's no bubbles,

you're gonna have greasy chicken.

So you wanna make sure that you always have some bubbles.

Alright, so it's been about four minutes

and we're gonna flip it over so the other side can cook.

I'm flipping away from me as well so I don't get splashed.

This batch is ready to go.

Drain it really well so we're not dripping everywhere,

right onto a rack.

The reason I want to put this on a rack

is that it won't be sitting in its juices

and it'll remain crispy.

If you put this on a plate,

the chicken's gonna steam from underneath

and your chicken's gonna get soggy, and we don't want that.

So put it on a rack to rest, drain it really good,

and then you fry your next batch.

If I was to take this chicken and not do the second dredge,

all the spots where it was wet would actually burn.

So that second dredge is really important.

Watch what's going on.

I'm looking for a nice, even brown color on the bottom

before I give it the flip.

So my chicken is done frying. Look at that.

It's got that nice craggily crust on the outside.

I know that it's juicy in the middle because I brined it.

I just can't wait to get this on a plate and eat it.

My fried chicken takes a little time,

takes a little effort, takes a little bit of love,

but look at it, it is gorgeous.

Who would not want to have a piece of this fried chicken?

Put it up to my microphone. Can you hear this?

That is the sound of crispy chicken.

That wasn't a big enough bite. Hold on.

The crust is super crisp.

The chicken on the inside's super juicy.

The seasoning is all throughout the chicken

'cause we let it brine for 12 hours.

I think this is the perfect fried chicken.

I know frying at home can be intimidating sometimes,

but if you follow my method, you follow my technique,

you're gonna have tender, juicy,

and crispy fried chicken every single time.