An Attempt To Kick Colonel Sander's Testicles.

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I tend to get fried chicken cravings. Seriously, I do. So I was browsing around the net when I came upon this recipe for The Ultimate Fried Chicken (I think it was a Tyler Florence recipe), thought that it seemed nice enough and so decided to make my own.

I wanted to give Colonel Sanders a kick in the nuts, so to speak. At least, that was my intent lah. So on we go!

So you need:

Okay first you need a good knife for what I'm about to do. Preferably a long slender flexible one. The knife you see in the picture is a Japanese fillet knife. It's not ideal, but it works. Make sure it's sharp.

Chicken drumsticks. You can use any part, but I wanted drumsticks.

These stuff: flour, oil, garlic, cayenne powder, rosemary, thyme, sage, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt, pepper, Tabasco sauce, buttermilk.

I'm not following the recipe exactly here. Because:

• I couldn't get fresh herbs in the quantity I wanted; the original recipe called for the fresh herbs to be infused in the oil. But since I'm using dried, I'm incorporating it in the flour.
• The Tabasco sauce I'm using isn't the regular kind, but Habanero, which is hotter.
• I'm going to de-bone my chicken.

Okay enough of that. Let's debone the chicken. A word of caution: if you're not good at handling knives, forget this, just skip the de-boning process.

You start by making a cut parallel to the bone; cut into the meat until you can see the bone. Once the bone is exposed, start cutting off the meat. Use straight, steady strokes.

See what I mean? The meat along the bone is easy enough; it should just tear away. Use short, steady cuts on top of the drumstick to separate the meat from the joint end. Once the top part is cut away, the meat can just be pulled back/scraped away from the bone.

Like that. Next up, use the back of the knife and break the bone near the ankle joint. Scrape away stray pieces of bone shrapnel. Incidentally, this is how your run-of-the-mill chicken chop is prepared.

And there you go, deboned chicken drumsticks. If you're making chicken stock (highly unlikely haha) keep the bones. If not, buang sudah. Wash the drumsticks and remove any excess fat or smashed bone pieces. Next step is brining. Fill up a bowl with water and sprinkle about a tablespoon or so of salt in it.

Now cover the bowl and leave it in the fridge for 2 hours. Okay, just assume 2 hours have passed. Drain the water and pat the chickens dry. Next up is dredging and frying.

In a bowl, put about 2 cups of flour; add in the spices and herbs listed above, about 2 tablespoons each, and an appropriate amount of salt. Mix well eh.

In another bowl, pour in the buttermilk and add 2 tablespoons of Tabasco sauce. Mix well. I don't know if you can get buttermilk in Malaysia, but I think maybe Cold Storage would have it. If not, susu biasa also okay.

Meanwhile pour sufficient oil in a pan and set to medium-heat. Cut a garlic bulb in half and chuck it in the oil. Let it heat; the garlic will infuse the oil. It smells fantastic by the way, haha. So now it's dredging time.

You need both hands for this step: keep one dry and one wet:

• Chuck the chicken in the flour. Using the DRY HAND, coat the chicken evenly; take out and dust off excess flour.
• Now put chicken in the buttermilk mixture. Using WET HAND, baste the chicken in liquid; take out and drain excess liquid. Chuck it back in the flour.
• With DRY HAND, coat the chicken in a second layer of flour.
• Leave on a wire rack for a few minutes.

If you fail to see the logic in having one dry and one wet hand, it's this: if you use just one hand to do this, you'll end up making the flour wet. Wet flour = cucur. Are you making cucur? Tak kan?

And here's my chicken pieces already dredged and ready for the fryer. Check the oil; the garlic should have cooked by now; take most of it out, if not it'll burn. I turned the heat on high (something I'd regret), but you should have it on medium-high.

The oil should be hot enough, but not smoking. Place the chicken in the oil, in batches. Don't overcrowd the pan.

I wish you were here; at this point it smells amazing. Hahaha.

Fry the chicken for about 10 - 15 minutes, turning regularly. It should be golden brown. With a good enough stove, the chicken should be cooked through; Crunchy outside, moist and tender inside. Which brings me to my results:

Ta daa. To be honest it looks like crap. I'll blame this on:

• Electric hob/stove. It's ridiculously difficult to control the heat on these without taking the pan off the burner.
• My pan got too hot on the bottom, burning some of the crust off.
• I think something must have gone wrong in the dredging process; the coating fell off. BUT this is most likely due to a temperature problem.
• General error in production. Humph.

Taste? It was good actually, but I suspect it'll be even better with fresh herbs... and if it was cooked in a nicer way. As it is, I slightly burned parts of the crust. The crust was nicely tasty, although maybe it could have used a bit more salt. The meat was moist and tender; But I think using deboned drumsticks was a mistake because it's a tough cut of meat. Maybe I shouldn't have deboned them.

It's recommended that this is served cold or cooled. The flavors would blend better by then.

So will I do this again? Maybe. But I'll wait til I have a gas stove. Until then, Colonel Sanders won't get that kick in the nuts.

Unfortunately.

- Muhammad Edwan Shaharir.


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