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).
Crust Lust
Next up: add some extra crunch to that crust. I reasoned that
there were a few ways to do this. First off, I wanted to
increase the crust’s thickness. I tried double-dipping my
chicken—that is, dredging the brined chicken in flour
(seasoned with the same spice blend as my brine), dipping it
back into the buttermilk, and then dredging it once more in
flour before frying, a method chef Thomas Keller uses for
his justifiably famous fried chicken at Ad Hoc. This worked
marginally better—that second coat definitely developed
more crags than the first coat did. But it also made for an
extremely thick breading that had a tendency to fall off the
breast because of its heft.