The Fried Chicken, not Fried

One More Technique for the Fried Effetc

If you remember, we already wrote a post about the Fried Effect on barbecue. In truth, this do not represent a problem if you simply conceive the grill as a source of heat: in that case just fill up a wok or even a common pot with oil and bring it to the right temperature through the heat of the coal or propane gas, which by the other way cause of its power is well suited to the purpose. The problem is cooking food at very high temperatures, immersed in a highly inflammable liquid few centimeters far from burning coals. If it’s happened you to watch some video on domestic accidents that happened during the cooking of the typical fried turkey in occasion of the Thankgiving you have in mind what can happen under those circumstances if you are not more than careful.

I admit to being particularly sensitive to this aspect: it’s a kind of setting that scares me a lot. It is from this that I started searching for an alternative method which was born to obtain results as as similar as possible to original deep frying, then subject of the post about frying on barbecue. The limit of that setting is, of course, that if it is true that it is very well suited for thin cuts, such as wiener schnitzel or Mozzarella in Carrozza, it goes a bit to a crisis when it’s about major cuts, such as classic fried chicken thighs. So the research in this respect has continued.

Reading here and there, I came across on an American site, a technique to get the best fried chicken possible, in the oven and without using oil. I immediately thought I could revisit it in a barbecue key. It is essentially to punch the skin so dense, so that as much fat as possible can surface, spray it superficially with baking powder and pre-cook for about one hour at about 100°C. Once the outside is well dry, suddenly raise the temperature through the grill function and spray the canola oil on chicken surface.

Let’s see together what I did and what happened:

So I proceeded managing for myself a tenderizer, one of those presses with thousand needles that are usually used to prepare the meat to the effect of marinades or brine, and I have repeatedly punched the skin of some chicken drums.
Then I mixed in equal parts a rub particularly suitable for the chicken in the barbecue, the Axtschlag Magic Dust with some baking powder and dry sprinkled by massaging the chicken drums. I then put them on a support for lollipop and placed them in indirect cooking at 100°C in a kettle without adding smoke.
After 1 hour, the skin is actually very dry and looks almost sandy. To the touch almost seems to separate from the underlying flesh, appearing as a single big bubble. I proceed to add half a chimney of briquettes that I had before taken to burn and sprayed abundant canola oil on the drums skin.
The temperature stabilizes immediately at 185°C and after about 10 minutes I am re-checking. The skin is dry but lost the “bubble” effect, but now it looks very firm to the flesh even if it looks extremely crisp and friable.

Conclusions:

I can not say that the effect is exactly the same as a frying but it is something very different from what I would have obtained by simply cooking the chicken drums in indirect mode: the skin is crunchy, it literally makes “crunch!” when you bite it but what’s changing is the taste. If you have grilled chicken and fried chicken, you know you have two very different flavors. Here, this is a middle way between the two, really interesting. Ultimately it is an experiment that is definitely worthy of being carried forward. The next step will be to try to replicate this setting but inserting a breading crust in the procedure and attempting to replicate the Kentucky Fried Chicken style chicken, to understand us.