How To Make Fried Chicken Restaurant Style _ Seasoned Salt Brine

Hello , everyone .

Welcome back to cooking with Donna .

Today we are making up some good old fried chicken .

It's light tender , crispy .

It doesn't have that hard crunch to it .

It's a nice tender flaky , crispy batter , but it's not real hard .

Like a lot of them can be .

But I went ahead and , and brid my chicken got everything started here .

Hopefully it doesn't take too long .

I wanted to get a head start here .

But in my bowl , I have 10 pieces of chicken .

I have five thighs , five legs washed up really good .

Then I stuck it in a salt brine .

A lot of people prefer buttermilk .

I like a salt and sugar brine with spices .

But in my brine , I have nine cups of water , two tablespoons of seasoned salt lorries .

I like to use one table of Creole seasonings .

I like the Tony's Creole seasoning , two tablespoons of sugar that just balances out your salt .

And I have one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of garlic powder , one tablespoon of onion powder and a quarter teaspoon of thyme leaves crushed all up in there and then just get it all dissolved .

Stir it up and get it dissolved .

Add your chicken to this brine and marinate it for a good seven hours .

So , if you're gonna have some marinate it in the morning , that way you have it ready for , for your , your dinner and then we , I removed it as you can see , pat it dry , get it nice and dry .

You want to pat , pat it dry .

And I done mine , like I said , for seven hours sometimes if you go longer , especially if it's smaller pieces of chicken , it tends to get really salty .

So that's why I go seven hours .

Eight hours wouldn't hurt if it's large pieces of chicken .

Ok .

All right .

Next , I'm gonna bring over my flower and in my flour here , we're gonna season this as well .

I have these ready .

I have four and a half teaspoons of baking powder here .

This is what helps it get nice and light and crispy .

4.5 teaspoons of baking powder .

Now , in this bowl , I have all of my seasonings mixed up .

I have one teaspoon of seasoned salt , two teaspoons of onion powder , two teaspoons of garlic powder , one teaspoon of black pepper and one teaspoon of cayenne pepper that it doesn't make it hot .

The cayenne pepper , not at all .

And a half a teaspoon of poultry seasoning and that's all here .

And we're just gonna put that all in our , our flour there and we'll just mix this up .

We want your flour seasoned real good and get you a nice heavy pot to fry this in whether it be your dutch oven , your cast iron , some type of heavy tall pot .

All right .

And I got this mixed up .

Get all that bacon powder in there worked out in those seasonings .

Ok .

Now , here I have three egg whites .

Just the whites only .

I'm gonna beat these up , maybe 2025 seconds just till they start getting a little bit frothy .

All right .

And I'm gonna add in a half a cup of water and a few dashes of your choice of hot sauce .

Just a few dashes , maybe a couple of teaspoons the top on there .

All right , I'm gonna , what I'm gonna do here now and if I ever forget anything y'all , I do leave it in the description box with the ingredients you'll be needing or if I forget something .

Ok ?

Let me get my little , we're gonna dredge our chicken and put it on a , a cooling rack and we're gonna let that sit there for a good 8 to 10 minutes .

Let it uh , start getting that tacky gummy feeling to it or look to it .

So what we're gonna do here and let me see if I can get all this in here .

I'm going to do all my legs first , then all my thighs because they do fry differently .

Thighs take a little bit longer than the legs .

But if they seem to be all the same size to you .

You know , that's your choice .

But what I'm going to do here , I'm gonna , I guess I'll start with my , I'm going to bring my , my pot up of my oil .

I'm using canola oil .

You could use peanut oil , but I'm doing 1.5 quarts of pure canola oil or peanut oil , do whatever one you want .

But make sure you got a , like I said , a nice tall pot to do that in .

And we're gonna bring that up to 350 °F .

So let's go ahead and dredge our chicken .

Get it ready while our grease is coming up to temp .

All right , I don't know if they can see this here .

Ok .

First I'm gonna dredge this in some flour and then we're going to go in the egg wash , get all that flour off there .

This is just to help the egg wash stick to this and then back into the flour .

This helps with the crispiness of your chi .

Those egg whites , get all those egg whites off there .

Now , what you wanna do when you put it back over here , you wanna press that chicken , press it down , get all that flour and that seasoning worked in there .

And meanwhile , as I said , get your oil brought up to 10 , 3 50 .

You wanna make sure every piece of that chicken is coated .

So just gently shake that off as you can see that's all nice and coated and we're gonna set it on the cooling rack as I just showed you and we're gonna let that .

It probably about 10 minutes .

Each batter , each batch you put in like if you're gonna fry all your thighs right now , once you're fry , you're frying your thighs .

Go ahead and better your other five up .

I have 10 pieces , as I said .

So I'm gonna do this again and I'm going to repeat this .

I'm gonna do all my thighs first , I guess .

Shake that off , dredge that in your egg wash and I'll just keep repeating .

Ok .

Y'all , I have my oil heat it up to 350 .

Now , it's important for a lot of people .

As you can see , I have my thermometer here .

It's a candy slash fryer thermometer .

This will give you accurate your accurate temperature because a lot of people love fried chicken .

But there's so many people that also has tried to make it and they cook it either too hot and their chickens raw inside .

So this is a really a great thing to invest in if you're not sure .

Um Just bring it up to 3 50 .

Your temperature is going to drop to around 3 25 to 300 .

And that's where you want to kind of maintain your , your temperature at is at 300 to 3 25 because once we get this chicken in here , that temperature is going to drop from 3 50 .

But you want to bring it to 3 50 and then put your chicken in and then the next batch , make sure you allow your temperature to come back up to 350 again .

And if you got to move your , your , um , your little switch there to turn it up and down , it's very important to keep the correct temperature when it comes to frying chicken .

Now , if you're a chicken pro , you don't need one of those .

But this is just something I wanted to show for the people that have a hard time .

They really want to fry , but they don't want to because they had a disaster at one point in time with fried chicken .

I think we've all been there .

Right .

But we're going to drop this in .

We are at 3 50 .

And as you can see the chicken how I said , it'll get a little bit tacky looking like sticky tacky looking .

But I'm going in with my chicken , we're gonna drop this in and as I said , this temperature is going to drop , always drop your chicken in away from you .

These are pretty big .

So I'm gonna try three here in this pot here .

Now , if you have a deep fry , you're fine .

And now a lot of times when people fry chicken , they'll say , don't disturb it .

You don't want to mess with that coating , but this chicken is pretty good .

It stays adhered .

To the , to the chicken , but once it starts frying for maybe a minute or so , I'll go ahead and move it and flip it and I'll keep flipping mine because , you know , sometimes you can get that dark spot and you eat with your eyes first .

I like it all even .

So I'll , I'll flip mine every couple of minutes just to keep that even browning on it .

Ok .

So I'll flip this over here in another 30 seconds or so .

And as I can see here , my oil temperature has dropped to 300 .

I'm going to keep an eye on that to make sure it stays at 303 100 to 325 .

You don't want to drop below 295 or so .

That's my opinion .

Ok ?

And just slightly , just move it around .

This really is some delicious chicken guys and I hope , I hope you try it .

We're gonna have some mashed potatoes and gravy and some vegetables with it and some biscuits .

Ok .

I'm gonna flip this over and like I said , I'll just keep flipping it every couple of minutes and we're gonna fry this the thighs .

Usually between , it depends on how big they are .

But as long as your internal temperature is at 165 you're good .

But normally with medium size thighs , I go between 15 to 18 minutes , the large 18 to 20 minutes long as your temperature is correct .

Ok .

So I'm going to finish doing this .

Ok .

I'm just moving my chicken around .

I just wanted to give you guys a glimpse at it .

Can you see that there ?

How nice and golden that's looking .

I hope y'all can see that .

I got maybe five minutes left on my fry here with my thighs and then I'll get my other ones in and I still got one more thigh to fry .

So we're getting there y'all .

OK .

I'm taking this out guys .

The first batch here .

Doesn't that look beautiful ?

OK .

OK .

Friends .

There's the fried chicken .

Um My legs fried for 13 minutes and my thighs fried uh for 16 minutes .

Now , if you have bigger thighs , it may take you up to 20 minutes .

It just depends .

Like I said , as long as it's 1 65 you know , check it if you can't check it , at least open it up before you serve it to anybody .

You don't want anybody getting sick .

You know , all you chi chicken experts know , but there's so many of them that are , are so eagerly to learn .

So this is for the ones that want to learn and it's delicious fried chicken and Curtis is gonna try it with some of this Mike's hot honey .

This is not a sponsor .

Nothing like that .

It's just something we like to have with our fried chicken .

You guys wanna try this , give it a try .

It is awesome with fried chicken .

So go ahead , Curtis .

Get a bite with them .

Let him hear that nice crunch and it's a light crispy crunch guys .

Like I said , it's not hard .

Get a good bite of that Curtis .

Holy cow .

Is that good ?

That's really good .

Awesome .

Hold on .

Go ahead and look at that chicken .

Guys fully cooked .

Nice and juicy .

Look at that juice and by brining it , that's how you get that tender juicy chicken .

You hear that crunch , give it another crunch Curtis and it's a light crunch .

Delicious .

Ok , guys , I hope you guys enjoyed this .

We're gonna have some dinner and please like and subscribe as always .

I so appreciate it you guys and we will see you guys next week and go .

Look at my merch guys , make you up some fried chicken .

You guys stay blessed .

Bye bye .