I do to.

Also excellent for doing sugar-temperature specific recipes such as fudge, marshmallow and Turkish Delight.

I suppose it's an American dish anyhow so I won't whine about the non-authenticity of cornflakes. Have you ever tried sweet potato starch though?

I tried a buttermilk brine once. I immediately recognized the funky flavor I associate with my USA trips, a flavor I don't like...

for me it is somehow the same:
- brining brings out the taste of fast food or cheap processed meat
- starch in crust, big no no
- why hide the juice taste of chicken with spice mix?
but I know that this is just my cultural bias I grew up with "fryed chicken" that is done in same way as Wienerschnitzel, and this is still for me a comfort food I do for myself every few months.

Um no, brining tenderizes the meat and ensures a crunchy outside and juicy inside.

In the US, most fried chicken is made in the home - not bought at KFC/another fast food place.

Re: Brining...

Could I ask those of you who have a tried-and-true great brining recipe to share it?

I tried to brine chicken breasts, but they turned out much too salty for my taste. The chicken was nicely tender and juicy, though, so I'm keen to try again. (Admittedly I rarely use salt, so I've become rather sensitive to it.)

Many thanks.

Then the previous posters are referring to some other kind of fried dish. No authentic Southern fried chicken would omit the buttermilk brine or some kind of breading. Authentic SFC isn't normally found outside granny's family kitchen, and certainly not at the establishments where most folks think they've eaten it.**


**Granny's family was First Landgrave of Carolina, arriving in 1660s Charleston. Her kitchen is still there.

This may be Shake and Bake?

I bought a freshly rotisserie Chicken at Coop today, f10.75 and we’ll get two, maybe three, meals (for two) out of it!

You've scored 100% in the Swiss Integration Test. Congratulations!

We are salt-a-holics in this family, sorry dear meloncollie - hope you find one that fits for you.

@meloncollie, brining isn't a recipe; it's a science. If you are are not making SFC with your chix, then dry-brining is the best way to go, especially if you are just cooking for 2-4. You can still achieve great results with less salt, but the natron really crisps up the skin, so do try it.

https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-dry-brine

Thanks, I will need it soon I don't want to start any "war of the tastes", there are already too many all around. Just wanted to add another piece in the mosaic of culinary delight that is called "fried chicken".

Btw, while we are at ingredients for the "south USA fried chicken" , few questions about buttermilk. If I look at wiki, there are 3 variants of it:
- originally, buttermilk referred to the liquid left over from churning butter from cultured or fermented cream
- commercially available cultured buttermilk is milk that has been pasteurized and homogenized, and then inoculated with a culture of Lactococcus.... to simulate the naturally occurring bacteria in the old-fashioned product
- acidified buttermilk is a substitute made by adding a food-grade acid such as vinegar or lemon juice to milk.

I see a big differences in the three of them in the term of active microorganisms they have, which actually help to tenderise meat (beside the acids). The first one is also much more "thin", as far as I remember is almost clear solution. I was doing few times butter out of cream. So, which one should is the "true" buttermilk?

And, where are you getting the it? Even better if it is not priced as a luxury ingredient? I don't have much luck seeing it anywhere.

I've never brined anything in my life!

I try and cook at least one new recipe every week so...do those milk + lemon juice buttermilk substitutes produce the same results as buttermilk?

While they work Ok in an emergency in baked goods, you don't want to add fruit acids to a long brine because it actually dissolves the muscle fibres and leads to a weird texture.

...hence my questions

I know, both from literature and practise, that brining or long sous-vide cooking with already salted meat changes the texture of the meat. It has less texture, but is also (for me) somehow slimy. Imagine "Hinterschinken" vs "pork roast". This is much more obvious with pork than with a beef. I haven't done it yet with chicken, but I was eating "fried chicken" that was first cooked sous-vide and fried after. I didn't like too much.
I was also using koji to tenderize meat, but was I was not overwhelmed with the results. I seriously think good meat needs only salt, and sometimes pepper in/or butter.

Yeah, acid is used in ceviche to break down the fibres, it has similar effect as cooking (without pasteurising the food).

So I would happily try some recipes with chicken, but I want first to clear what is the right buttermilk for it. Cooking blogs are notorious bad source to get right information (but serious-eats above is usually quite good).

I used to buy buttermilch at Coop or Migros. It was fairly inexpensive. It's dead cheap here in AT; about a euro for 500ml. Good stuff! The non-commercial (unpasteurised) product is available at the summer alms around us, but it's a bit pricey to use as a brine, and I'd have to keep it very cold on the way down!

Any extra can be made into lemon-buttermilk souffle for dessert.

What I've always used for a buttermilk substitute is regular milk mixed with white vinegar. (I do this because I have to use lactose-free milk).

1 cup buttermilk = 1 Tablespoon white vinegar + enough milk to measure 1 cup

https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/...ke-buttermilk/

I often use this in a recipe I have for pancakes and it works really well. I guess lemon juice works, too, though.

Not sure what the purpose of "brining" chicken is, but I have a recipe for baked garlic chicken breasts where you dip the raw chicken in melted butter mixed with a clove or two of crushed garlic, then dip in the breadcrumbs, etc., and the chicken is always very moist as long I don't bake it for too long.

Some of the best homemade "fried chicken" I've ever had was actually baked!

Koko's Chicken at Zurich Stadelhofen does some good asian style fried chicken. https://koko-chicken.ch/stadelhofen/


KFC in Volketswil also not bad https://www.kfc-suisse.ch


The stuff ain't healthy, though, I don't make it a habit.

Yes, me too, but only made out of chicken breast. It was my mom's specialty for when we went to a class trip for instance and had to take food from home.
But normally we would have oven baked chicken as she rarely fried anything in a bath of oil (well, apart from Wienerschnitzels and French fries)
I'm also making Wienerschnitzels sometimes, as you said it's comfort food.
OH is much better at new recipes. We are loving Szechuan chicken lately...

OK, there are clearly a variety of views on this topic.

Harlen Sanders became unsatisfied with the quality of KFC after he sold it. The original KFC, while Col. Sanders ran it, was crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, flavored with the "11 herbs and spices" and included a twelfth ingredient, MSG.

By the time I was a teenager, the "Original Recipe" had morphed into a softer, but still tasty, recipe, that lacked the original crunch. The corporation then added the "Crispy" version to conpensate. Now, at least in Austin, the last time I went, the service was bad, the store was dirty, and the food just sucked. KFC went corporate, with predictable results.

Of course, I wanted to reproduce the "real" recipe, which is impossible now. No one alive remembers what the "real thing" was. I tried to find it, and the best guess was a rather long video on YouTube that recommended brining with spices, baking soda and food-grade potassium nitrate overnight, then deep pressure-frying. I didn't have the equipment for proper pressure frying, so I tried substituting regular deep-frying.

Best fried chicken I've ever made, but definitely not KFC.

My guess is: pick your own spice mix to suit your tastes (white and black pepper prominent, especially white, and use MSG), marinate overnight, bread in spiced flour, then either use buttermilk or egg/milk wash, bread again in spiced flour, then deep-fry or pressure fry in a pressure cooker, watching the cooking time carefully. Drain and let rest for a few minutes, then enjoy. Exact temperatures and timings are a matter of experiments.

Serve with home-made mashed potatoes and brown gravy, homemade coleslaw, and love it. KFC is gone, except in name, so we fried chicken lovers will have to experiment.

I'll post the recipe when I find it. So far, DIY is right. Damn!