Adding vodka to your fried chicken at home is sure to make it extra crunchy, but this unusual ingredient will keep the meat moist inside. If you’re not careful, the high heat from frying can quickly take chicken from succulent and tender to a dried-out disaster. However, there’s one overlooked item, potentially even sitting in your cupboard, that will give your chicken the boost it needs.
Adding cream of chicken soup will help your meat to cook tenderly but still provide the perfect crispy layer of batter. It tends to contain a mix of chicken stock, flour, cream, chicken fat, and vegetable oil, all useful for achieving the tastiest dish. Using this ingredient serves three main purposes for your home-cooked meal, the first being that it adds heaps of flavour. It also is a great help when it comes to making the dredge stick to the meat before it’s fried. Most importantly, a thick layer of the soup helps to lock in a whole load of moisture that might usually be lost during the evaporation process of frying. Not only this, but adding the cream of chicken soup to your fried chicken is a cheap and cheerful way to keep all of those tasty juices in place while taking very little extra effort.
But how exactly do you use the canned soup to ensure the best results? The answer to perfect fried chicken at home is all in the well-seasoned dredge, used to stick to the meat.
This is where your canned cream of chicken comes into play, because instead of using a typical egg wash, add the egg to the soup in a bowl, along with a sprinkle of salt. Alongside that, you’re going to want to mix your cornflour and flour with your chosen seasoning before coating the chicken in your egg mixture as normal.
Then, it’s time to drendge it with the flour blend, where you will notice the mixture already starting to take hold of the soup. It’s recommended that for top results you should let your soup and egg marinate, sitting until the outside starts to look slightly doughy, as this is the key to an even crispier exterior.
Once you’ve got a pan filled with piping hot oil, you should add the chicken for around 10 minutes before removing it to drain. Allow some time for the fried chicken to cool before biting into what should now be a deliciously crispy batter with a tender inside.
Another trick for the best fried chicken of your life, is adding Vodka into the mix. Many cultures have been doing this for years, wether its with spirits or beer, to add an extra crisp to the outside batter, and there’s science to explain just how it works.
When volatile liquids like vodka are exposed to large amounts of energy, such as the high temperatures of the oil in the pan, they tend to evaporate a lot faster than water would. This helps to dehydrate the batter quicker and, in turn, allows it to perfectly crisp up for that extra crunch.
