Chicken and Egg

Cold winter nights call for warm comforting food, savoury flavours, a deep richness. Being a fan of all things fried, crumbed, dredged and satisfying in their unctuousness, schnitzel makes quite a showing over the colder days, not that there seem to be many this winter, pork is always one of my favourites, especially with lashing of nose tingling hot mustard, chicken is a close second, a breast butterflied and crumbed is probably the best use for that piece of meat, it’s cooked quickly and stays juicy even though thin, thighs work just as well but are a little bit more work.

There’s not a whole to the flavour of chicken, so it’s best to use it as foil to build on, in this case I was really going for an umami bomb. The chicken is dredged in seasoned flour, then dipped in an egg wash laced with shiro miso, and coated in seasoned panko. I like to keep the oil I fry in quite neutral, butter just messes up the flavour, I did contemplate it though, so grape-seed was used, a good half inch deep, don’t skimp, it prevents burning and having enough oil ensures you can keep a good temp and stop the coating soaking it up due to temp drops. The chicken should only take a couple of minutes each side, when golden remove to a rack.

While the chicken rests to the side heat up a skillet with a knob of butter and spoon of shiro miso, when the bubbling subsides give the pan a swirl and slide a cracked egg in. cook until the whites are set and yolk runny. Place the cooked chicken on a plate and slide the egg, miso buttery pan juices and all, on top and finish with a grate of some aged sharp salty cheese.

Pork Schnitzel

Schnitzel, the porky kind, but works equally well with beef, if you’re a traditionalist, is a pretty easy throw together kind of meal, ideally you’ll be getting the crumbing done an hour or so before cooking so it has a chance to set in the fridge. And don’t be afraid of the oil, yes this is shallow fried, yes fried foods are not every day foods, but it’s not really all that bad for you.

We had this golden crunchy schnitzel with a fresh salad, tomatoes and herbs (and herb flowers, thyme flowers are awesome) straight from the garden and heart of celery leaves torn up, red onion a vinaigrette of cider vinegar, garlic and olive oil bought it all together, I like a bit of acid kick with fried foods. Not pictured but essential in my opinion is a good schmear of hot english mustard, there is something about crumbed meat and that hot nasal clearing condiment that works oh so well.

Stage one, preparing your meat.

• Get three bowls and a sheet pan ready, also clear a shelf in your fridge.
• Bowl one, add about a cup of wholemeal flour, a good pinch of fine salt, white pepper and sumac, mix together.
• Bowl two, beat 2 eggs with a pinch of salt until homogeneous.
• Bowl three, add enough breadcrumbs, I prefer panko.

Place the schnitzel in the bowl of flour and toss, ensure the meat is completely coated. Shake off any excess.


Transfer the floured meat to the egg bowl and coat, don’t leave any dry spots.


One at a time, take the meat from the egg mixture, shake off any excess liquid and lay on top of the bread crumbs, press down, flip and press down again, make sure there is an even coating, transfer to the sheet pan and repeat with the remaining meat.


Place the sheet pan in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Stage two, cooking your meat.
Set up your cook area, place a rack near by to drain the cooked schnitzel and put a pan on a medium high heat, I use a 12 inch cast iron skillet to cook with. Pour in about an inch of oil into the pan, rice bran is a good inexpensive neutral oil to use (much better than canola), heat the oil to 190ºC, you can test with a cube of bread by placing it in and seeing if it fries up golden brown, it shouldn’t take long to heat up.

Carefully place one or two pieces (depending on size) of schnitzel in the pan, laying away from you to avoid splashes, and cook for 90 seconds per side, when cooked transfer to the rack to drain, repeat with the remaining schnitzel.

Chicken and Waffles

Savoury and sweet sometimes it's an odd combination to get your head around, no doubt it works and works well, especially sweet and salty, bacon and maple syrup, salty licorice candy, fruit paste and cheese, to name a few easily reconciled combinations. But there are some combinations that at first thought just kind of make your brain kind of go hurrrrr, not that they should, take fried chicken and waffles, perfect crunchy on the outside chicken with nutty crisp waffles doused in syrup, no harder than sweet and sour pork to understand right? Maybe it’s the obvious mash up of dessert and mains that I have the psychological barrier with, but I don’t feel the same about bacon, pancakes and syrup, but then maybe bacon transcends course definition altogether and just is. Anyway, enough rambling, here's my version of chicken and waffles, the starch instead of flour in the dredge keeps the chicken crisp and the masa adds a wonderful flavour. Pickle juice in the brine was a revelation, it really picks the chicken up.


Brine (baker's percentages)
100% Buttermilk
50% pickle brine*
4% salt
3% chilli powder
1% smoked paprika

* If you don't want to use pickle brine, just skip it, but keep the salt at 4%. We want the salt levels at about 3–5% by weight, and the above percentages are best guess to what the pickle brine is bringing to the party.


Dredge
250g potato starch
150g masa
1% salt (4g)


Fried Chicken
Chicken thighs are the best cut they are juicer and have more flavour. Use boneless thighs, if you feel confident and want to save a few bucks, buy bone-in a do the work yourself (the difference is usually $5/kg here in NZ).

The night before:
Mix the brine together and add the chicken thighs, refrigerate for at least few hours or overnight.

Ready to cook:

• Mix the dredge together in a bowl, pass it through a sieve.
• Remove the chicken from the fridge.
• Get a fryer on, or a heavy base pot on the stove over a medium-high heat with a few inches of rice bran oil (or other frying oil), you want to get the oil to 190ºC before cooking.

Cooking:

• Get a rack ready for the cooked chicken.
• Pull a couple of thighs out of the brine and shake off any excess liquid.
• Toss them in the dredge making sure they're coated all over.
• Shake off any excess dredge and carefully place the chicken in the hot oil, make sure to lay it away from you so it won't splash back at you. My cast iron pot isn't huge so I only do 2 at a time.
• Cook for 3–4 minutes, they should be cooked through and be golden brown, a good indicator is when the the bubbling starts to slow down.
• Move the cooked chicken to the rack and leave to rest, they’ll stay nice and crispy thanks to the potato starch (DO NOT "drain" on paper towels, they are the enemy of all crispy fried foods).

Serving:
Well it’s really up to you, fill up a bowl of chicken goodness with lashings of hot sauce, share or don't. But I do suggest you try the combo of chicken and waffles at least once, below are the steps for my version, a whole wheat waffle and crispy fried chicken doused in zesty spicy syrup, topped off with some fresh pickled daikon to cut through the richness and a bottle of Tapatío hot sauce on the side to give a little extra chilli kick.

---

Pickled Daikon
Daikon
1 part mirin
1 part cider vinegar
salt

Mix together the mirin and vinegar, season with the salt, the daikon is a little bitter so a little extra salt won't hurt. Cut a 6 inch length of daikon off and peel, use a mandoline or speed peeler to cut thin ribbons, stacking them as you go. Cut lengthwise into fine strands. Toss the daikon in the vinegar mix, cover and let sit for about an hour. When ready to serve, remove the daikon from the liquid and squeeze out any excess liquid.


Zesty spicy maple syrup
100 ml Maple syrup
1 Lime, juice and zest
Chilli flakes
Salt

Add the lime juice and zest along with the syrup to a pot and place on a medium-low heat. Add chilli flakes to taste. Allow to simmer and infuse for a few minutes. Taste and add salt accordingly, a small pinch, grains, should do, just enough to take the super sweet edge off.


Waffle mix
150g Whole Wheat flour (~1 cup)
250ml buttermilk
1 tsp Baking soda
1 tbsp rice bran oil
1 egg
1.5 g salt

• Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and make a well. Whisk the wet ingredients together and pour into the bowl. Fold together, don’t over mix.
• Lightly grease the waffle iron and cook as per your cooker. Transfer to a rack in a warm oven (~50ºC), if preparing well in advance transfer to a rack to cool, and then reheat in a warm oven later.

Waldorf Slaw with fried spicy chicken

I do believe I have thoroughly covered fried chicken on here previously, so excuse the gloss over, this isn’t too different from previous versions, apart from the fact that white meat is used.


Waldorf Slaw
Savoy Cabbage
1 Apple, granny smith or lemonade are good
Walnuts, toasted and chopped roughly
Red onion, thinly sliced
Mayonnaise
Lemon juice

• Remove the tough outer leaves from the cabbage, peel off enough leaves for the salad and blanch in boiling salted water for a minute, transfer cooked leaves to an ice bath until cool, thoroughly drain and pat dry, slice thinly.
• Slice the apple thinly into matchsticks and toss in a bowl with lemon juice. Add a dollop of mayonnaise. Toss through the cabbage, onions and walnuts, taste and season with salt and lemon juice.

Fried Chicken Strips

• Place buttermilk, 1% salt, cayenne pepper, hot sauce into a zip-lock bag.
• Cut chicken breast lengthways into 1cm slices, place in the bag and massage, put in the fridge and let it rest at least 4 hours.
• Add to a bowl, by weight, 1 part wheat starch, 1 part tapioca starch, 1% salt, 2% garlic powder, 1% cayenne pepper, 1% baking soda. Mix well.
• Tip the chicken out into a colander. Set up a rack over a sheet pan. Take strips of chicken, knocking off excess buttermilk and toss in the starch. Arrange the coated chicken on the rack. When done refrigerate for 30 minutes, remove before heating the oil.
• Heat a few inches of oil in a heavy based pot, I usually use rice bran or canola, but any frying oil, or fat, is fine.
• Set up a rack to transfer the fried chicken to, near the pot is good. I usually have a rack with raw chicken on the right, pot in the middle and rack for cooked chicken on the left.
• When the oil is at 190ºC start carefully laying strips of chicken in the oil, don’t overcrowd the pot, you’ll need to do it in batches.
• Cook for 2–3 minutes, remove to rack and drain.
• Toss the cooked chicken in your favourite hot sauce and serve in a soft bun with Waldorf slaw and most importantly crinkle cut pickles.

Fried Chicken

There’s something comforting about a plate piled high with fried chicken, a side of slaw, potatoes and gravy, and a few pickles. It’s not the healthiest dinner in the world, but cooked correctly the chicken should be anything but greasy.

This is a pretty good base recipe, if you want to kick the heat up a notch or ten add cayenne to the brine, and up the percentage to three in the dredge, don’t go overboard in the dredge though as the higher percentage spice likely burn when fried.

I’ve used wheat starch as it’s gives a crispier coating that keep crunch for longer than plain flour, but there’s no reason you can’t use flour if you don’t have any at hand. Potato starch could be substituted also. Wheat and potato starch can readily be found at any asian market in Wellington.

Chicken portions
Oil for frying, canola or rice bran

Brine
Buttermilk
4% Salt
6% Hot Sauce

Dredge
Wheat starch
1% Salt
1% Cayenne

Mix together the brine ingredients and pour into a ziplock bag, place in the chicken portions and seal, removing as much air as possible. Place the bag in a bowl in the fridge overnight.

Half an hour before cooking remove the chicken from the bag, shake off any excess brine and arrange on a rack, allowing any excess brine to drip away.

In a heavy based pot, I use an enameled cast iron pot, pour in a couple inches of oil, enough to cover the chicken. Place the pot on a medium heat and monitor the temperature, you want it to get to 180-190°C and then maintain it at about 160°C when cooking.


Combine the dredge ingredients together in a bowl, mix thoroughly. Toss the chicken in the dredge, shake off any excess and place back on the rack.

Get a rack set up ready for the cooked chicken, if you’re doing a large batch you could put it in a warm oven, but if you’re only cooking up half a dozen pieces the bench will probably be fine.


Carefully lay a piece of chicken, away from you, into the hot oil, don’t overcrowd the pot. Cook for about 5-10 minutes for a drumstick, or until the internal temperature has hit about 65°C, it will rise while resting, if you’re a bit worried cook to 70°C. As the chicken cooks you’ll notice that the oil starts of vigorously bubbling and slowly subsides, this is the moisture in the chicken turning to steam and escaping, it’s also a good indicator that the chicken is getting near done when the bubbling starts to calm down.

Hot thighs

Well I had planned to actually deep fry the chicken, you know go the whole hog, brine, dredge, egg wash, fry and get greasy spicy chilli oil everywhere. However the day kind of got away from me and quite frankly I had lost all motivation to get a pot full of oil and control temperatures, and then clean up the mess, so I looked to my previous tried and trusted methods of oven “fried” wings, spiced it up and adapted it for some juicy thighs. There aren’t really any proper quantities below, they are all to taste, it’s more the method of getting pieces of chicken with a crunchy exterior and a steamy moist interior without having to resort to deep frying. The method is a little more time consuming than chucking a bunch of chicken in a hot oven and cooking, but not by much.

• In a large bowl mix together flour, salt and cayenne pepper, as much or as little as you want, go a little heavy on the salt as it will be the only seasoning the chicken will get.
• Toss the chicken pieces through the flour mix, make sure to pat the mix into all the crevices. Place on a sheet pan with a rack and refrigerate uncovered for an hour.
• Get two bowls out, in one get an egg wash ready, 50/50 mix of egg and water, in the other mix together 1 part flour and 1 part semolina, spice with cayenne and chilli flakes.
• Dip the chicken in the egg wash and then dredge in the flour mix, return to the rack. Refrigerate uncovered for at least an hour, you could do this the day before.
• Preheat the oven to 220ºC, remove the chicken from the fridge 10–15 minutes before cooking, place the tray in the oven and cook for 10 minutes. The short cooking time is to “set” the coating in place before meddling. Reduce the heat to 200ºC.
• Remove and brush the top of the chicken with chilli oil (store bought or canola blitzed with dry hot chilli flakes), return to the oven and cook for a further 20 minutes.
• Remove from the oven, turn the chicken over and brush the exposed side, return to the oven for another 20 minutes.
• Last time, remove the chicken, flip it, don’t bother brushing it, you shouldn’t need to, cook for a final 10 minutes.
• Transfer the cooked chicken to a cooling rack to rest for a 10 minutes, lace with hot sauce and devour with a cooling slaw and pickles, always pickles.

Extra hot chicken

For a long time I had avoided deep fried foods, much for the same unguided reason I avoided the fat in food, I was brainwashed to believe fat in means fat on, not the reality that it’s just a source of calories no different from the other calories going in, maybe a bit more dense in calories and possibly not as nutritional. I also had the impression that fried food equal greasy fatty food, this maybe true for things such as french fries which can be a whopping 50% fat by weight and food cooked incorrectly, but not at all the case for foods cooked at the correct temperature. The other main reason for the avoidance, or at least at home, has always been the smell, but get a thermometer, a heavy based pan, don’t overcrowd it, and that shouldn’t be a problem either, heck even the crappy domestic extraction system should be enough to deal with it.

So, deep fried chicken, getting thoughts of poorly cooked greasy fast food? Well, don’t, think crisp, crunchy, steaming hot, not at all greasy, fiery hot spicy goodness that will leave you red in the face and dripping with sweat.

3 Chicken legs, portioned to thigh and drum
Canola oil


Brine
All percentages are by weight (eg. 1000 ml water, 50 grams salt)
Water
5% Salt
2.5% Cayenne powder
1.5% Garlic powder
1.5% Onion powder
2.5% Chilli flakes
0.5% Hot sauce
0.5% Morita Chilli

Heat the water in a pan and dissolve the salt, add all the other ingredients and cover, let it cool to room temperature. Place a large zip lock bag in a bowl and add the chicken, pour in the brine and remove as much air as possible while sealing the bag. Place in the fridge for 12–24 hours.


Dredge
Flour
Salt
Cayenne Pepper*
Chilli Flakes*
*The more you add the hotter it’ll be, so add heaps!

Remove the chicken from the brine and pat dry, toss in the dredge, shake off excess flour and place on a tray with a rack on it. Refrigerate for an hour, uncovered. Do not dispose of the remaining dredge yet.

Egg Wash
1 part Egg
2 parts Water
Salt


Cooking

• Remove the chicken from the fridge and let sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.
• Heat several inches of oil in a heavy based cast iron pot to 190ºC.
• Dip the chicken pieces in the egg wash, shake off any excess, toss in the dredge again, and shake off any excess flour.
• Cook the chicken in batches, carefully laying the chicken away from you in the oil, cook until the internal temp reaches 65-70ºC (depending on how paranoid you are, the temp will rise at least 5ºC while resting).
• Remove the pieces to a rack, not paper towels, to drain and rest while you cook the remaining chicken.

Serve with some sour pickles and lashings of hot sauce (if you can take the heat).

---

Bonus, oven baked extra hot wings


Brine
Water
5% salt
Chilli flakes*
Cayenne pepper*
*As much as you can handle, more the better I say.

As above, place wings in cooled brine in zip lock bag and refrigerate for 12–24 hours.

Dredge
2 parts flour
1 part fine semolina
smoked paprika
cayenne

• Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. 
• Shake excess brine off the chicken and place in the bowl. 
• Cover tightly with a couple layers of cling film and shake (you could do this in a bag), make sure the chicken is evenly coated. 
• Place chicken on a rack set over a sheet pan and refrigerate uncovered for at least an hour. 
• Use a spritzer to coat the chicken in a fine film of olive oil, or gentle toss the chicken in a bowl with a little oil (take care not to dislodge too much coating). 
• Use a sieve with some fine semolina to put a light coating on both sides of the chicken. 
• Cook in a preheated 230ºC oven for 40–60 minutes, turning every 20 minutes. 
• Add lashings of habanero hot sauce and devour.

Fried wings

Wings again! But this time fried not baked, not quite as healthy, but hey you only live once. These are pretty straightforward to make, no faffing about with batters and the like, just marinate the wings in buttermilk, with a few extras, then dredge in a mix of potato starch and flour, and deep fry for a couple of minutes. For an extra spicy twist toss the crunchy cooked wings in some hot chipotle sauce. Devour with a cold beer and crisp cooling coleslaw.

For 500 grams of wings:
250ml Buttermilk
2-3 Chipotles
150g Potato flakes
150g Flour
Salt and Pepper


Blend the chipotles and buttermilk, season well with salt and pepper, stir in the wings, cover and leave in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Buttermilk is a great tenderiser and will do wonders to the wings.

Blitz the flour and potato flakes in a food processor with some salt and pepper to make a fine powder. Toss the wings in the flour mix, making sure to shake off any excess marinade first, set the coated wings aside ready to cook.


Heat the deep frying oil to 180°C, rice bran is good. Fry the wings in batches until they’re floating on the surface and have an internal temperature of 70°C. The mini ‘drumsticks’ should take 5-10 minutes and the wings 4-7 minutes.