Go to the Recipe: Sous Vide Fried Chicken
Hey Brendan, I have a pair of questions about your fried chicken recipe. Do you ever encounter pink or bloody bones in the leg meat? I haven't had much success with SV dark meat at lower temps. And does the skin become crispy under all the breading? I've not done a deep fry of sv chicken with the skin on AND a thick breading before. Your recipes look delicious!
I want a damn video for this , pahleeeeeaaaase
I'd like to add something that is crucial, but not told enough. Use free range chicken, whatever the effort you put into your cooking, you can't be expecting perfect results if you use meat from a chicken that lived in a cage and has never been able to move freely nor use its natural instinct.Free range chicken is expensive, but so is meat in general....
I note that you show two different brines, but I only see one brine recipe. I'm familiar with a salt brine but not a buttermilk brine. Would you share the recipe? What is the difference in flavor and texture of the chicken in the different brines? Excited to try this!
made this tonight. overall, loved it. I would recommend removing the skin, seemed to be too fatty with it on; just my take. Also, I feel like the second crumb needed a little seasoning. I used some sea salt flakes and pepper after frying. mmmmmm!
Yes, bloody bones happen a lot. A lot of times it's not actually blood but bone marrow that has leaked since the chicken's we consume these days are so young and their bones are not as hard as older chickens. As long as you are following proper time/temp guidelines any pink is just a matter of appearance. The skin does not really get crisp in this situation, as others have mentioned I'd probably go back and remove it if you would like. It's an added step for me so I usually just leave it on but as always this is a technique that is always evolving
I was doing some personal testing to see what the difference between an equilibrium brine vs. a standard buttermilk brine would be like in the final product. Decided that the equilibrium brine was much better so I moved forward with that in the recipe.A buttermilk brine for traditional southern fried chicken is just usually buttermilk + seasonings + chicken for 24h.
I agree, the seasonings could use some upping in this I think, I based them on my development for this particular process but haven't tweaked the flavors much which would be the next step. I would consider this to be a bare minimum for seasonings. I also agree that the skin could probably be removed without issue, I don't mind it and it's an added step so I left it out but it's also something that needs to be tweaked moving forward.
Your recipe was a great spring board. In the end, removing the skin produced better results than leaving it on; I had the family weigh in on both. As for refinements, I added a bit of sugar to my flour which gave it a dark crust without increasing the cooking time. I also added a pinch of citric acid to the flour mixture to get a little more pop out of the flavors. On top of this, I did a double dip; in other words... dip in flour- buttermilk- flour, let this rest for 5 min, then dip in buttermilk and then finally the flour and allow one more rest of 10 min. After 4 or 5 min in the fryer, I had the making for a great dish with very good flavors.
