Perfect chicken for deep frying or grilling. And a bonus recipe. Ayam Goreng.

Southeast 5 or 6, backing east or northeast 4.

Moderate, becoming slight.

Rain at first.

Good, occasionally poor at first.

 

 

Might be an odd post to some since it is well known that I don’t like chicken anymore.  But a request from an ill child, the “OMG I promised long time ago my chicken secrets” realisation and at the same time a “what about the deep fried Asian chicken I had at your house” remark let me to grasp the nettle.

So today is a trick for safe and juicy chicken. The recipe at the end has little to do with the first part; I just thought I should at least throw a recipe in.

And the next post (maybe tomorrow) is about an actual recipe in regards to chicken when you are under the weather.

The photo is obviously not mine, but sourced from “labelled for reuse”.

The secret to safe and juice chicken is brining it first and then steaming.

I knew about brining and I knew that in commercial chicken outlets the bird is not raw. Well, it does make sense. Think about your BBQs. Chicken gets either dry or is raw. And you don’t want to poison your customers. No street stall with any responsibility will use raw chicken. No public BBQ (e.g. for your school) should use raw chicken. And if you are clever and like deep fried chicken, you make sure that you can eat even a big piece in safety.
But combining both is a trick which is described in the Momofuku cookbook.

The steps might sound a bit of a faff, but if you think about it: All it needs is one afternoon (maybe when you purchased the chicken thighs on special offer and lots of them) and you can fill your freezer. For the rest of the summer all you need to do is take out the birds in the morning, let them defrost and marinate for one hour. Then on the grill and you get really juicy barbecued chicken. Or take them out and throw them in the deep fryer. No breading required if you are lazy. Perfect deep fried chicken.

Here is what you do:

Step 1

Make a brine with cold water, salt AND sugar. You are aiming for quite salty water, a tad bit more than seawater. The sugar is there to give your chicken a nice golden crust when fried. Whisk until the water is clear and everything is dissolved. Add your chicken thighs and let them brine for no less than 3 hours, but preferable no more than six.

Step 2

Take the chicken out and steam them. So you either put them in your (if you have one) rice cooker with steaming facility, your steamer gadget or the little metal petal for your pots (like this). 

Fill the steamer with water and let the bird steam for 20 minutes.

Take out, put onto a plate or into a dish, cover with clingfilm and let it rest overnight in the fridge.

You are now either ready to proceed (if you plan a BBQ tonight), and which case just use your usual marinade, or put them into a freezer bag and into the freezer. You will notice that you can now fit far more chicken into your freezer than if they were raw.

That`s all to it.

And, don’t throw the water from within the steamer away. It is a perfect base for a chicken soup. So do freeze it as well.

The (unrelated) recipe

Ayam Goreng

Not really unrelated since this another, but similar, method to make very good deep fried chicken.

Ayam Goreng means exactly this, deep fried chicken, and is what you get on street markets all over Asia. Especially Indonesia and Malaysia.

The method is insofar similar that the chicken is made “unraw” in a spicy and salty liquid, cooled and then just thrown into the deep fryer. But it is not steamed, it is poached (perfect if you have a slow cooker!) and thus gives a different texture and taste. It tastes less like chicken than the steaming and brining method, since the other flavours do their magic.
But it is really good, especially if you like fried chicken with an Asian twist.

You can do the poaching base anyway you like. The traditional method is making a paste with the spices, heating that paste in a pan, add coconut milk and, once the two mingle, add your chicken.

Or you throw all ingredients for the liquid into a food processor and make a slurry.

But since I used to make them in the slow cooker, I just threw all the ingredients in the crockpot and let them cosy up to each other for 2 hours on low. The advantage of this method is that you can sieve the liquid later and have a wonderful base for a coconut chicken soup.

2 chicken thighs

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon chilli powder (omit if you don’t want it very spicy)

1 tin of coconut milk

2 shallots, peeled and chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed

1 knob of ginger or galangal (no need to peel)

2-4 bird's eye chillies, leave whole

2 kaffir lime leaves

2 sticks of lemongrass

1 tsp tamarind paste

1 tsp rock sugar (or kandis)

Throw all the ingredients (bar the chicken) into a pan and heat through. Let them cook for about 5 minutes, but don’t boil them or the coconut might split (if you use a crockpot, use your ”high” setting for this). Once it is hot and starts to smell divine, add the chicken and turn down your heat to the lowest setting (think of the chicken having a long warm bath without bubbles). One the chicken is cooked through (depending on your method anything between 30 minutes to 2 hours), take the thighs out and let firm up in the fridge.
Once you are ready to roll heat the oil. Traditionally you ought to use coconut oil, but this is quite expensive. In my experience a good natural rapeseed or groundnut oil (which is peanut oil so don’t use it if you have an allergy) does the trick too.

Once the oil is hot enough, throw the chicken in and fry until golden brown. Enjoy!

P.S. If you don’t like the richness of coconut milk in that recipe but still want a bit of the taste, use coconut water instead. It also makes it less calorie dense.