Fried chicken, hot or cold.
I love it both ways.
(whooshing music)
Okay, so here's what I'm gonna do.
First I'm making a spice mix.
Cayenne pepper and paprika.
Right, those two things go in there.
A little black pepper as well.
Put as much or as little as you like.
And then of course salt.
So I mix that little spice mix together
and that's effectively
what we're gonna use to season our flour.
Now, the flour that we're gonna dredge our chicken through,
I've got AP flour going in there
but then I add in some cornstarch
and that cornstarch...
(video crumbles)
Rice flour's another good one
but the cornstarch will make it extra crispy.
And then what I do is I take about half of that spice mix
and sprinkle that over my flour
and then the rest- Great.
I bring it straight over here Rachael,
I put it straight over my chicken
so, let me bring that up here so you can see it.
And then go ahead and...
I need a third hand.
Go ahead and toss that around
and you'll get that beautiful seasoning
sort of into the actual chicken itself.
And then of course we all know buttermilk and chicken
when it's fried are best friends,
so you take that through your spice mix
then into your buttermilk, right?
So you let it marinate.
Now you can let it marinate overnight if you want to,
but the truth is even just an hour or so
will still give you great flavor, right?
So we toss-
Gotcha. All of that together
and get it nice and moist.
Pick up your chicken into the flour
then you're gonna toss that around, right?
But because you want that crust to be really
crunchy and wonderful,
what I like to do next is I go from the flour into egg.
Okay?
So the egg will actually give you just an extra crunch there
and it'll really hold on to that flour
much better in fact, than just the buttermilk will.
It was after weeks of experimenting
'cause I wanted a fried chicken that would stay crisp after,
not just straight away. That's great.
You want it to stay crisp the next morning
when it's been sitting in the fridge,
because of course when you're going on a picnic,
you want it to be super crispy.
So go from the egg.
You don't have to get all that off,
you can just dump it on in
and then again, you go back into that flour.
Now, another little secret Rachael
is always check the temperature of your oil
so I've got my kinetic thermometer here.
I'll make sure that that oil is about...
You want it sort of somewhere between 350 and 400.
Now, you'd normally tell someone to fry at about 350
but I like it just a little hotter
because the chicken will actually
bring the temperature down.
So I've just cranked the heat there.
That's at 350 now, so that'll get nice and hot.
And then you just gently, slowly drop that chicken in.
And I'm sort of shallow frying here instead of deep frying,
and that means you're just gonna turn the chicken
sort of halfway through of course.
So I cook it halfway and then I take it out,
let it rest, right?
And in that process- Gotcha.
I sort of turn it over.
The other way of course is you drop it in the oven, right?
That's possible too.
But I like dropping it in here
and then let me just grab...
I actually did some ahead of time
as would she.
But I brought some out here.
(Rachael laughs)
And you could see how golden
and wonderful those look. Oh, wow.
Doesn't that look great?
Gorgeous.
So yeah, I would take it out halfway.
Let it rest, let it cool down for a minute
and then you pop it back in that nice hot oil again.
Exactly. And then you put it on
the wire rack, yeah.
That's right.
A little bit of seasoning. And a little more salt.
Nice. A little bit of salt.
And then, if you wanted to try a real quick sauce together,
I learned this when I was in South Africa
it's called piri piri sauce
which means hot, hot sauce.
Now, it's actually not ridiculously hot but-
(Rachael chuckles) It's really simple to make.
You need some chili, some garlic and some red pepper, right?
So just three ingredients.
You toss that in...
Three veggies, I should say.
Toss that into a mini food processor,
then some red wine vinegar
and a pinch of salt and a little bit of olive oil.
Now, you'd normally just pour that olive oil in slowly,
but I'm going to dump it in and see if it works.
I've never done it before but let's try.
(blender whirring)
(Rachael laughs) We have mixed it up.
(Man laughs)
It's really fast
but I tell ya-
And you can't get easier,
I mean, as such a simple sauce.
Right. It's so great.
And it just gives you...
I mean, I know I love honey and hot sauce,
that's how we serve it at Picnic Society down at The Grove
but surely this is such a beautiful...
Like, it's zesty and it's light and airy.
You could imagine- (Rachael laughs)
Rach, how that would taste, don't cha?
(gentle whooshing music)