- Everyone loves a chicken tender.
Yes, some people might think it's basic, it's not actually,
it's really complicated once you get into
the technique, right, the mouthfeel, the crunchy.
Who doesn't want the most delicious chicken tender ever?
I am going to walk you through my shatter batter.
Stay tuned!
(upbeat music)
For this chicken tender, I am going to show you
where the actual tender lies on the chicken.
This is purely just essentially for knowledge base purposes.
When you approach the chicken,
you have a wishbone or collarbone that lies in here.
You definitely want to remove that,
because the chicken tender is attached to that bone.
So you want to make an incision down both sides
of the bone, okay?
So from the top down, two slices.
Then you just put your fingers in there,
and it pops out very easily.
Use that, save that for stock, for sure.
There's a breastplate bone that runs down the middle.
What I'm gonna do is just separate that
from the bone, like so.
So very important, when you're getting
the chicken tender out, right,
it lives just next to this breastplate,
and let the knife do the work.
You don't really need to apply too much pressure
and just sort of come down.
And it will naturally separate itself very easily.
Then you can just sort of pop that thigh out.
You can take this entire piece off really.
Okay.
Here is your tender.
You can use a knife to just slightly separate that
and here we have our first chicken tender.
You can definitely just buy chicken tenders
but if you want to break down whole chickens at your home,
you can save up your chicken tenders over time.
Buttermilk brine, I love to impart salt and flavor
into all of my animal proteins.
Every time that I cook, I'm going to season my proteins
prior to cooking, well before cooking
to pull moisture out.
So salt goes in, moisture comes out, right?
So you want to completely submerge the chicken tenders
into the buttermilk with a little bit of salt,
a tiny bit of sugar, it'll help add flavor.
The buttermilk is going to tenderize our chicken tender.
I place these chicken tenders in the brine
for about 20 minutes, you don't need a ton of time.
The tenders themselves don't have a lot of density
to them so it will accept that buttermilk brine
and flavor very quickly.
Shatter batter!
Super crispy, crunchy, stays crispy and crunchy.
How many times can I say crispy crunchy?
We're gonna count.
You wanna use three types of flour.
I like to use a mixture of cornstarch,
rice flour, and AP flour.
By using that mixture of flour, it allows itself
to sort of stay crunchy over time.
The spices in this shatter batter are paprika,
cayenne pepper, mustard powder, black pepper,
little bit of garlic powder, little bit of onion powder.
Okay, so we have the base here.
I'm just gonna give this a little taste.
Needs a little bit of salt.
That mustard flavor comes in just elegantly
on the background so beautifully.
Sifted dry ingredients, done, set that aside.
When we're making batters, right,
especially for this chicken tender batter,
the reality is the goal are the bubbles,
we want to protect those bubbles.
Once that temperature of the cold batter
hits the hot oil, it's going to puff.
Egg whites, again, volume, right?
We want to create volume, so we're gonna go,
we'll go four eggs here, let's see how that goes.
We'll get plenty volume out of that.
Very important to, when you're whisking,
add volume in it, don't just mix it.
You definitely want to open yourself up.
Easy, okay.
Soda water going in, soda water, look at all the bubbles.
We do not want to mix this.
Once you add the liquid to our batter,
there's no turning back, so really it's just
all about folding and the viscosity
that I'm looking for, right, I want this
to be just a little bit thinner.
Okay, so we're gonna fold these egg whites in,
allowing those bubbles to introduce itself
to the flour and the spices and the party.
Saying hello, what's up paprika?
Let me in.
Let's get these chicken tenders tasting delicious.
First what I do is I dredge the chicken itself into flour.
All I'm doing is adding a layer of flour
on the outside of this chicken tender
so that the batter sticks to it.
That is the only reason why I'm placing this in the flour.
It's just a light little hey, how you doing?
So a little bit of a secret.
What I do is I add a tiny bit of this fryer oil
to the batter and what happens is,
it's just gonna bring the temperature of the batter up
so that when I place the chicken tender
into the fryer oil, they meet
and they join forces and it kinda fries from the inside out.
Okay, first chicken tender, let's see how you come out,
and then we'll talk to your friends.
And you want to make sure that we just kind of
introduce the chicken tender to the oil.
You wouldn't wanna just go in and just drop it down, right?
It's a good sign, we have bubbles, guys.
What I'm gonna show you after I drop all of this chicken
is a nice little extra added bonus tip
to make sure that we get the most amount of crunch.
Who doesn't love crunchy, craveable texture?
So we don't want our oil too hot,
you don't want it too low, nice, call it 365
is your optimal range.
We don't want the batter to burn.
Let's see how we're doing here.
Oh yeah.
Oh my gosh, this is happy, fun food.
I've spent so much time making fancy, fancy food
in fancy restaurants, and it's really fun
and refreshing to just make the simplest things
like absolutely phenomenal.
There's nothing more satisfying.
Like this,
that's like purely beauty.
Just gonna turn up the heat a little bit.
The oil tends to drop a little bit in temperature
when you add the chicken, because obviously
the chicken is cooler than the temperature of the oil.
These chicken tenders, I know they're done
because they talk to me, they're like
"Nyesha, we're perfect."
And I say, "Okay, chicken tenders, you can come out
"of your hot tub."
You know, it's one of those like Jedi things,
you just know, it just lives in the nether space.
Okay, we're getting close.
Just want a little bit more color on that chicken.
Oh yeah.
That's some happy chicken tender action right there.
All of this, this crunchy, delicious.
I mean for me, I think like, for a delicious chicken tender
it's gotta be like two to one ratio crunchy to chicken.
Next step is to solidify the crunchiness.
425's gonna be our optimal heat temperature here,
and what I like to do is just drop it in
for one minute or so, just to make sure
that we really have that shatter crispiness going.
Yeah, it doesn't need much time.
A minute or so, just to make sure everything is shattery,
I think that's an adjective.
We're using this amazing salt, regular kosher salt
that we sort of ground down,
and what's gonna happen is that's gonna hug
this batter very nicely.
Now to plate these chicken tenders.
I love this, I love when it sort of comes off
the side that way, we have like almost two parts
shatter batter to one part chicken.
An amazing, craveable texture.
One of my favorite sauces is a simple, simple honey mustard,
so let's get into it.
Got to dip, got to dip.
That is what you want when you eat a chicken tender.
Crunch, right?
Crunch, delicious, that buttermilk brine
goes all the way through, it is exciting my entire palette
through the entire mouth experience.
Those spices shine.
You get the sort of smoky paprika first
and then it sort of, the cayenne comes in from behind
and then the mustard powder and it just encapsulates
all of your taste buds into one delicious experience.
Heck yes, this is a winner, nailed it, first time.
The spices really come to life when it hits that oil,
that paprika, the smokiness, little bit
of that mustard coming through,
and that paprika gives an amazing, smoky flavor.
The cayenne just adds a tiny bit of spice,
absolutely stunning.
The chicken is tender, it's flavorful, it's juicy,
and the crunch just keeps giving.
I love that.