Ok- so really I made the chicken September 16th.... but I didnt have time until now to start blogging about it. This next post is my horrible decision to make this ad hoc chicken for a fundraiser.
After patting myself on the back for being the most awesome fried chicken maker ever.... i decided that i would donate my time and energy to a fundraiser. I would make the fried chicken. In the beginning the idea sounded great. easy peasy, japanesy. wrong, wrong, wrong. The fundraiser was for about 20-25 people; about 60 pieces of chicken. omg.
This time I cheated, I decided that I wasn't going to buy whole chickens. Instead, I would by precut chickens. next bad decision- buying chicken on sale..."griller packs". Griller packs included leg/thigh pieces as one, and also one whole breast piece. It took me forever to slice out the drumstick from the thigh. then I had to de-bone the rib cage from the breast. The skin on the breast also didn't want to stay on... which sucks for fried chicken. The griller packs also had chickens that must have been on steroids... the drum sticks were huge! uh oh... the ad hoc recipe book has cooking times based on small pieces... not crazy overweight super sized pieces. this caused me to start stressing on cooking times. 12 mins? more? 15 mins?
brine time. the good news is that I made the brine ahead of time so that it would be cooled before i finished chopping the chicken. the bad news is that i ran out of mortons salt and had to use my sea salt. this goes back to page 55 (i think) where Mr. Keller talks about how salt is different. I started to get scared that I added too much salt. So the next batch of brine didn't have enough salt. I over analyzed the salting and then decided that the soak for the brine should be 8 hours instead of 12. In the end, i think i should have left the chicken longer, but oh well, its a fundraiser, not a real restaurant.
the morning of the fundraiser i started to get worried that I would be able to fry all the chicken in time before the luncheon. when the oil went to 350 (yup! i went and bought a real candy thermometer) - i threw about 6 pieces of chicken into the oil. bad news. the temp went down to about 270. the batter started to come off because the chicken were too crowded. oh darn. it became an oily nightmare. i set these chicken to the side and then ended up re-battering them and frying them again before we left for the luncheon.
for the second batch (for frying), i only put in 3 pieces. the chicken looked great. about after 3 different batches, i had to switch out the oil. it had this awful dark color and looked gross. kinda reminded me of when i get my oil changed in the car. blegh.
30 mins go by while the new clean oil heats up. i try to clean the massacre in the kitchen... so far its batter, flour and oil - everywhere.
about 2 1/12 hours later all the chicken is cooked. i try to cover the ugly burnt looking ones on the bottom. i swear to myself.... i will never fry chicken again. ever. this recipe needs to be crossed out of my book. i think i went overboard on this fundraiser. never again. never forget.
the good news? everyone loved the chicken. or at least thats what they told me. i thought they were too oily, but i'm probably my own worst critic.
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