How an Expert Chef Makes Crispy Chicken Tenders — Plateworthy

Everyone loves a chicken tender .

Yes .

Some people might think it's basic .

It's not actually , it's really complicated .

Once you get into the technique , right ?

The mouth , feel the crunchy .

Who doesn't want the most delicious chicken tender ever ?

I am going to walk you through my shatter batter .

Stay tuned for this chicken tender .

I am going to show you where the actual tender lies on the chicken .

This is purely just essentially for knowledge based purposes .

When you approach the chicken , you have a wish bone or collarbone that lies in here .

You definitely want to remove that because the chicken tender is attached to that bone .

So you want to make an incision down both side of the bone .

OK ?

So from the top down to slices , then you just put your fingers in there and it pops out very easily .

Use that .

Save that for stock , for sure .

There's a breastplate bone that runs down the middle .

What I'm going to do is just separate that from the bone like so , so very important when you're getting the chicken tender out , right ?

It lives just next to this breast plate and let the knife do the work .

You don't really need to apply too much pressure and just sort of come down and it will naturally separate itself very easily .

Then you can just sort of pop that thigh out .

You can take this entire piece off .

Really ?

Ok .

Here is your tender .

You can use a knife to just slightly separate that .

And here we have our first chicken tender , definitely just buy chicken tenders .

Uh , but if you want to break down whole chickens at your home , you can save up your chicken tenders over time .

Buttermilk brine .

I love to impart salt and flavor into all of my animal proteins .

Every time that I cook , I'm going to season my proteins prior to cooking well , before cooking to pull moisture out .

So salt goes in moisture comes out , right ?

So you want to completely submerge the chicken tenders into the butter milk with a little bit of salt .

A tiny bit of sugar .

It will help flavor .

The buttermilk is going to tenderize our chicken tender .

I place these chicken tenders in the brine for about 20 minutes .

You don't need a ton of time the the tenders themselves .

Uh you know , don't have a lot of density to them .

So it will accept that buttermilk brine and flavor very quickly .

Shatter batter .

Super crispy , crunchy , stays crispy and crunchy .

How many times can I say crispy crunchy ?

Going to count ?

You want to use three types of flour ?

I like to use a mixture of corn , starch , rice flour and a P flour .

By using that mixture of flour , it allows itself to sort of stay crunchy over time .

The spices in this shattered batter are paprika cayenne pepper , mustard powder , black pepper , a little bit of garlic powder , a little bit of onion powder .

Ok .

So we have the base here .

I'm just gonna give this a little taste .

Needs a little bit of salt .

That mustard flavor comes in just elegantly on the background .

So beautifully sifted dry ingredients .

Done .

Set that aside when we're making batters , right ?

Especially for this chicken tender batter .

The reality is the goal are the bubbles .

We want to protect those bubbles once that temperature of the cold batter hits the hot oil , it's going to puff egg whites again .

Volume , right ?

We want to create volume .

So we're gonna go , we'll go four eggs here .

See how that goes .

We'll get plenty of volume out of that .

Very important to when you're whisking add volume in it .

Don't just mix it .

You definitely want to open yourself up easy .

OK .

So water going in .

So to water , look at all the bubbles .

We do not want to mix this .

Once you add the liquid to our batter , there's no turning back .

So really it's just all about folding and the viscosity that I'm looking for , right ?

I want this to be just a little bit thinner .

OK ?

So we're gonna fold these egg whites in allowing those bubbles to introduce itself to the flour and the spices and the party saying hello .

What's up ?

Paprika ?

Let me in .

Let's get these chicken tenders tasting delicious first .

What I do is I dredge the chicken itself into flour .

All I'm doing is adding a layer of flour on the outside of this chicken tender so that the batter sticks to it .

That is the only reason why I'm placing this in the flour .

Just a light little , hey , how you doing ?

So a little bit of a secret , what I do is I add a tiny bit of this fryer oil to the batter .

And what happens is it's just gonna bring the temperature of the batter up .

So that when I place the chicken tender into the fryer oil , they meat and they join forces and it kind of fries from the inside out .

Ok .

First chicken tender , let's see how you come out and then we'll talk to your friends and you want to make sure that we just kind of introduced the chicken tender to the oil .

You wouldn't want to just go in and just drop it down .

Right .

It's a good sign .

We have bubbles guys .

What I'm going to show you after I drop all of this chicken is a nice little extra added bonus tip to make sure that we get the most amount of crunch .

Who doesn't love crunchy CRAV texture .

So we don't want our oil too hot .

You don't want it too low .

Good , nice three .

Call it 3 65 is your optimal range .

We don't want the batter to burn .

Let's see how we're doing here .

Oh , yeah .

Oh , my gosh .

This is happy fun food .

I've spent so much time making fancy , fancy food and fancy restaurants and it's really fun and refreshing to just make the simplest things .

Like absolutely phenomenal .

It's nothing more satisfying like this .

That's like purely beauty .

Gonna turn up the heat a little bit .

The oil tends to drop a little bit in temperature when you add the chicken because obviously the chicken is cooler than the temperature of the oil .

These chicken tenders I know they're done because they talk to me .

They're like we are perfect .

And I say , ok , chicken tenders , you can come out of your hot tub .

You know , it's one of those like Jedi things you just know just lives in another space .

Ok ?

We're getting close .

I just want a little bit more color on that chicken .

Oh yeah , that's some happy chicken tender action right there .

All of this , this crunchy delicious .

I mean uh for me , I think like it for AAA delicious chicken tender , it's gotta be like 2 to 1 ratio crunchy to chicken .

Next step is to solidify the crunchiness .

4 25 is going to be our optimal heat temperature here .

And what I like to do is just drop it in for one minute or so .

Just to make sure that we really have that shatter crispiness going .

Yeah , it doesn't need much time a minute or so .

Just to make sure everything is shatter .

I think that's an adjective .

We're using this amazing salt , regular kosher salt that we sort of ground down .

And what's gonna happen is that's gonna hug this batter very nicely now to plate these chicken tenders .

I love this .

I love when it sort of comes off the side .

That way we have like almost two parts shatter batter to one part chicken .

An amazing CRAV texture .

One of my favorite sauces is a simple , simple honey mustard .

So let's get into it .

That's a dip .

No , that's a dip .

That is what you want when you eat a chicken tender crunch right ?

Crunch delicious .

That buttermilk brine goes all the way through .

It is exciting .

My entire palate through the entire mouth experience those spices shine .

You get the sort of smoky paprika first and then it sort of the cayenne comes in from behind and then the mustard powder and it just encapsulates all of your taste buds into one delicious experience .

Heck guess this is a winner .

Nailed it first time the spices really come to life when it hits that oil .

That paprika , the smokiness , a little bit of that mustard coming through and that paprika gives it an amazing smoky flavor .

The cayenne just adds a tiny bit of spice absolutely stunning .

The chicken is tender .

It's flavorful .

It's juicy and the crunch is just keeps giving .

I love that .