My Fried Chicken

 I don't often eat fried chicken.  It just has too many carbs.   But sometimes I enjoy fried chicken anyway.   I've made fried chicken before but it didn't turn out very well.  Therefore I felt that I should learn how to do it.  

I watched Youtube videos on frying chicken.   Finally I decided to act.  The chicken had been sitting in the refrigerator for almost a week, and I had to admit I was afraid to try frying again.   I thought of roasting the chicken, but finally resigned myself to trying to fry chicken again.  

First I looked at my list of Youtube videos on the subject.  I wanted to know what I should dip the chicken in, the ingredients for the batter, what type of oil,  what temperature to fry at, how long to fry, and what the temperature should be of the chicken when it was done.   

One video recommended pressure frying in a pressure cooker.  But not just any pressure cooker.  The whole video was about pressure cookers, and when he got to the part about frying chicken, he declared that this was not a recipe video.  He did say to be sure to purchase a fire extinguisher for frying chicken.  Another video seemed to be about taste testing KFC vs pan fried vs pressure cooking in oil.   According to this video,  beef tallow makes exquisite fried chicken.  They promised.  Then the next video went ahead and spoke of the ingredients for the batter, but carefully left out any measurements, just ingredients.  After that there was one about making KFC fried chicken.  They did give the quantities and a list of ingredients.  But I'm not very interested in the eleven herbs and spices.  Every one of these videos was made by men, which is OK, except that they weren't covering the areas I needed to know about.  All of them made a point of using tongs to put the chicken into the oil, and take it out.  Problem.  For some reason, probably grip strength, I couldn't do it.  No amount of trying to pull chicken out with tongs was working.  Anyway, the smart way to do it, should you ever need to, is to use a long two pronged meat fork.  No one mentioned the temperature to fry chicken.  One said to take chop sticks and when you stick one into the oil and see bubbles, it's right.   Oh yes, and you absolutely must marinade for 24 hours.  So frying chicken was beginning to be undoable.   

Finally, I gave up on the Youtube videos.   I used two cups of flour,  two tablespoons of salt, and one tablespoon of black pepper.  I dipped the chicken in egg.   I decided to heat the oil to 340º F, and fried the chicken for twenty minutes, turning the pieces over in the middle of cooking.  I checked the temperature of the chicken - 165º F.   The chicken turned out OK.  I couldn't have told you the difference in the chicken I fried, and any other that I've eaten.  Unless to say it was better than some.  Why can't anyone tell you how to fry chicken?   It was like a maze.