Love making stir fry dishes at home, but no matter how hard you try the chicken ends up mushy and nothing like that crispy stuff the local Chinese Buffet pumps out all day long? Well, friends, I am here to save the day and make your next stir fry full of crispy, crunchy goodness no matter how much sauce you try to drown it in! It is honestly quite simple to make crispy breaded chicken that will hold up to sauce, and ultimately just comes down to a "secret" preparation and cooking technique the world needs to know, eh! Stick around a few minutes and bear with me as I reveal thousand year old ancient Chinese secrets never meant for the eyes of a white guy, so let's get cooking!
As always, I will highly suggest the use of dark meat chicken thighs for this, but the cook is so fast white meat should maintain some sort of juiciness without drying out so do as you will! Begin by dicing your chicken into bite sized pieces, about an inch or so trying to keep everything as uniform in size as possible. Throw all the chicken in a ziplock bag or sealable container and set it aside while we make the simple marinade. First, separate the yolks from the whites and put the egg whites in a small mixing bowl or pyrex container. Add the soy sauce and lightly whisk to combine. Pour the soy sauce and egg white mixture into the container with the chicken and marinate for 1-2 hours. For once, we only want a short marinade time to prevent the soy sauce from making the chicken too salty.
Remove the chicken from the refrigerator after a couple hours and drain off the excess marinade. Pour some corn starch in a separate clean baggie or container and add the chicken. Shake well till the chicken is thoroughly coated. Now this is where you can slightly deviate and add some regular AP flour to your coating. The corn starch produces the most crispy coating, but some flour will help bulk up the breading and add more crunch once fried. I went 100% corn starch for this batch, but feel free to conduct your own experimentation with 75% corn starch to 25% flour or even a 50-50 blend. I would keep corn starch as the main breading ingredient to ensure a good final crispy coating so I don't recommend anything beyond that 50-50 mix. Shake the excess coating from the chicken and prepare to fry it some oil at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
Before anyone has a conniption fit and too overworked, I did remove about half of this and cook in 2 separate batches to maintain oil temperature. Once your oil is up to 375 degrees, drop the chicken for 1 minute and 1 minute only. Set a timer and remove the chicken to drain and slightly cool. After 3-5 minutes, drop the chicken for an additional minute. Follow the same step a third time and voila, crispy fried chicken that is up to safe eating temperature (165-175 degrees depending on white vs dark meat).
Simply repeat the triple frying process till all your chicken is cooked. It can be eaten as is at this point, or dropped in with some sauce or veggies or any stir fry ingredients you desire. I had some Korean gochujang garlic sauce I was itching to try so I heated a couple tablespoons of oil in a pan and added the entire bottle of sauce till it began to bubble. I tossed in the chicken and gave everything a good stir to coat. Thanks to the triple fry process, the chicken will stand up to any sauce or stir fry recipe you want to throw at it, and still keep a good crunchy crust in every bite. No one wants soggy breaded chicken, eh?
So do me a favor and try out this little trick to crispy chicken. Call it chicken nuggets for the kids, toss in some wing sauce for boneless chicken wings, or use it as originally intended in a stir fry recipe! Check it out and let me know just how impressed you are with a tag on social media. Enjoy!
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