Fried chicken

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 1 hour, plus a 12 hour brine.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, jointed
• 1 litre brewed sweet tea, cooled
• 60g salt
• 300g plain flour
• ¼ tsp cayenne, 1 tsp black pepper, ½ tsp paprika cayenne, black pepper, paprika
• enough to come 2cm up the side of the pan lard, or a mix of lard, butter and oil, for frying

Method

1. Brine the chicken pieces in the sweetened, salted tea for 12 hours, refrigerated.
2. Remove from the brine and pat dry.
3. Season the flour generously with cayenne, black pepper and paprika, and dredge each piece thoroughly.
4. Fry in a heavy cast iron skillet, in enough fat to come partway up the pieces, at a steady medium heat, covering the pan for the first portion of the cook to help the interior finish gently, then uncovering to crisp the crust.
5. Drain on a rack, not paper, so the underside stays crisp.

What a modern chef changes

A sous vide pre-cook ahead of a short, hot finish, alongside Brock's own documented brine and frying medium

Rung 3

Method

1. Pre-cook the brined chicken sous vide to a precise, safe internal temperature, then chill briefly before dredging and frying, so the fry itself becomes purely about crust rather than carrying the whole cooking job; this is this chapter's own extrapolation from Brock's documented method, not a technique attributed to him or any named chef in the sources for this chapter.
2. Hold the frying fat at a genuinely stable temperature with a probe thermometer, rather than by eye, matching the consistency a cast iron skillet gives when its thermal mass is properly understood.