why do you soak fried chicken in buttermilk

Inside Out: Brine Before You Fry

I started with a working recipe of chicken pieces simply dipped in buttermilk and tossed in flour seasoned with salt and black pepper, then fried in peanut oil at 325°F until cooked through. A few problems immediately became clear. To begin, I need to talk about timing. When my chicken was fully cooked (150°F for the breasts and 165°F for the legs), the crust was a dark brown color that was almost black in some places. Not only that, but it didnt have nearly as much crunch as I wanted. Lastly, the meat under the crust wasn’t completely dry, but it also didn’t taste very good. I decided to fix my chicken from the inside out.

*For those of you squeamish about “undercooked” chicken or who insist that breast meat must be cooked to 165°F to be safe and tasty, please read this discussion on real world food safety, which is quite different from what the U. S. government would have you believe.

The problem is that with fried chicken, the crisp well-seasoned coating is merely a surface treatment. None of that flavor penetrates very deeply. Surely brining and/or marinating should help with that problem? Brining is the process by which a lean meat (most often chicken, turkey, or pork) is submerged in a saltwater solution. As the meat sits, the saltwater will slowly dissolve key muscle proteins—most notably myosin, a protein that acts as a sort of glue, holding muscle fibers together). As the myosin dissolves, three things take place:

• First, the meat’s ability to keep water in increases. You can think of meat as a bunch of long, thin toothpaste tubes that are twisted together. As you cook the meat, the toothpaste tubes get squished, which forces out the good juices. By slowing down the transfer of energy to the meat, breading will help lessen this effect to some extent, but the chicken will still be squeezed a lot no matter how well it is breaded. One of the main proteins that makes this squeezing action happen is myosin. By dissolving it, you stop a lot of water loss from happening.
• Second, brining changes the texture of the meat by letting proteins that have been dissolved connect with each other. This is the main idea behind making sausage: proteins that have been dissolved can stick together, giving the meat a nice, springy, tender texture. When you brine a chicken breast or pork chop, you’re basically giving it a very light cure. This is the same process that turns raw ham into soft prosciutto.
• Third, the brine slowly ages the meat below the surface as it works its way into it. A brine that you leave on the meat overnight will get a few millimeters deep into it, seasoning it before you even roll it in bread crumbs. Brines also make meat more juicy by making muscles better at keeping water in. It takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours to brine chicken breasts normally. In this case, though, a much, much longer brining time was needed to completely counteract the effects of high-temperature frying. This gave the meat a unique, juicy, and smooth texture.

A full six hours submerged in salt/sugar water produced the beauty below. Weighing the meat confirmed that an overnight-brined-then-fried bird loses about nine percent less moisture than an unbrined bird does and is significantly tastier.

A day ahead of time, I’ve tried tossing some animal preparations with a mix of baking powder and salt to make them crispier. The salt acts as a brine, while the baking powder raises the pH of the skin, causing it to brown more efficiently and the thin film of protein-rich liquid around it to form microbubbles that can add crispness. I tried this method on my fried chicken, but it ended up drying the skin out too much, making it tough to get the breading to remain attached down the line.

Knowing that Id be soaking my chicken in buttermilk the next day anyway, I wondered if Id be able to kill two birds with one stone by replacing the water in the brine with buttermilk. Not only did the chicken come out just as moist as with water brine, it was actually significantly more tender as well, due to the tenderizing effects of buttermilk on food (soaking it for more than one night led to chicken that was so tender that it bordered on mush). Finally, hitting the buttermilk with spices helped build flavor right into the surface of the bird. I played around a bit with the mix before arriving at a blend of cayenne pepper and paprika (for their heat and peppery flavor), garlic powder**, a bit of dried oregano, and a healthy slug of freshly ground black pepper. The Colonel may use eleven secret herbs and spices in his chicken recipe, but five was quite enough for me (and both my wife and my doorman heartily concurred).

**Some folks shun garlic powder, saying that its nothing like real garlic. I agree: garlic powder is nothing like real garlic. But that doesnt mean it doesnt have its culinary uses. Its particularly effective in spice rubs and breadings, where fresh garlic would be difficult to incorporate, due to its texture.

How to Make Buttermilk-Brined Southern Fried Chicken

I know how passionate people can get about fried chicken, and Im not one to tell you who makes the best, but if you were to ask Ed Levine, the Serious Eats overlord, hed tell you that its Guss, a sixty-seven-year-old institution in Mason, Tennessee. They serve fried chicken that he describes as incredibly crunchy, with a crisp, craggy crust, juicy meat, and a “cosmic oneness” between the breading and the skin. Were talking fried chicken so good that you have to resort to metaphysics to make sense of it.

For me, as a kid growing up in New York, fried chicken came from one place, and one place only: those grease-stained cardboard buckets peddled by the Colonel himself. To my young mind, KFCs extra-crispy was about as good as it got. I distinctly remember eating it: picking the coating off in big, fat chunks; tasting the spicy, salty grease; and shredding the meat underneath with my fingers and delivering it to my waiting mouth. It was heavenly.

But times have changed, and as is often the case, revisiting those fond childhood memories results only in disappointment and disillusionment. All over the country, theres a fried chicken and soul food renaissance going on. Even the fanciest restaurants in New York are adding it to their menus. My eyes and my taste buds have been opened to what fried chicken truly can be. I may still dig the ultracrunchy, well-spiced crust that KFC puts on its birds, but thats about the only thing it has going for it. Flaccid skin, dry and stringy breast meat, and chicken that tastes like, well, its hard to tell if it really tastes like anything once you get rid of the crust.

That said, stylistically, it cant be faulted. So I figured that I could somehow manage to take what the Colonel started and bring it to its ultimate conclusion—that is, deep chicken flavor; a flab-free skin; juicy, tender meat; and crisp, spicy coating—I might just be able to recapture those first fleeting childhood tastes of fried chicken as I remembered them.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken Made Easy

FAQ

What is the point of soaking chicken in buttermilk?

To make the best fried chicken, you need to use buttermilk. It helps make each piece tender while still leaving each bite juicy and crispy. After marinating, dredge your chicken pieces in the flour mixture and get to frying!.

Do you rinse meat after soaking in buttermilk?

Yes, it is generally recommended to rinse meat after soaking it in buttermilk. While buttermilk tenderizes and adds flavor, leaving it on can result in an overly tangy or acidic taste, especially if not cooked at a high temperature or for a long time, according to some cooks on Reddit.

Why do you use buttermilk for fried chicken?

Buttermilk is used in fried chicken for its tenderizing and flavor-enhancing properties. The lactic acid in buttermilk breaks down the proteins in the chicken, making the meat more tender and juicy.

Is KFC chicken soaked in buttermilk?

After some trial and error, they decided the chicken should be soaked in buttermilk and coated once in the breading mixture, then fried in oil at 350 °F (177 °C) in a pressure fryer until golden brown.