My wife told me that we were invited to a potluck on Friday night. I recently had some amazing chicken wings and I thought it might be nice to bring some fried chicken. The wings had a distinctive spice profile, most likely from paprika.

Costco had giant 6 packs of drumsticks (6 drumsticks per package) on sale a few weeks ago for the low low price of $6.81. I immediately put them in the freezer for future use. One of the drumsticks was broken in one of the packages. I pictured the bird running for freedom and getting wounded by her captors…

Cheap chicken! This 3 out of the 6 packs that sold for a total of $6.81.

I had long wanted to make the legendary KFC fried chicken recipe and its reliance on lots of paprika gave me comfort that things would turn out nicely. This KFC like recipe comes from an article in the Chicago Tribune by Joe Gray. The list of spices is long (11!) and the quantities large. This makes for a good excuse to do a spice inventory. One day you think you have a lifetime supply of paprika, the next day it is off to the closest, most expensive grocery store so you can finish all the measuring for the precious spice mixture. While it is posh to serve salt and pepper (s and p is the spice for me!) from grinders, it is a pain in the ass to grind up pepper and salt in larger quantities so I'm ditching the s and p grinding and the mortar and pestle work on the basil, oregano and thyme in future iterations.

I’m not going to be a dick and require you to scroll down 20 pages to see the recipe.

Fried chicken with 11 herbs and spices

INGREDIENTS

1) 2/3 tbsp Salt
2) 1/2 tbsp Thyme
3) 1/2 tbsp Basil
4) 1/3 tbsp Origino (sic)
5) 1 tbsp Celery Salt
6) 1 tbsp Black Pepper
7) 1 tbsp Dried Mustard
8) 4 tbsp Paprika
9) 2 tbsp Garlic Salt
10) 1 tbsp Ground Ginger
11) 3 tbsp White Pepper
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
Mix the 11 spice mixture with 2 cups of white flour.
Whisk the egg in the buttermilk and soak chicken for several hours or overnight.
Dredge chicken in the spice mixture and let it set on a wire rack.
Deep fry at 350 F for 8-15 minutes

While I ground up some bay leaves using a mortar and pestle, I would encourage you to use basic off the shelf spices. You can lose a lot of time just grinding pepper and salt into tablespoon quantities.

I honestly haven’t made a recipe that used up this much spice before so I was encouraged.

I soaked the chicken in the buttermilk/egg mixture overnight in freezer bags.

I put these in the refrigerator overnight.

I used fresh peanut oil for the fryer. After dredging the drumsticks in the spice/flour mixture and letting them set for 15 minutes, I was able to put all 18 drumsticks into the fryer at once without any drop in the 350ºF oil temperature.

You may have some spice/flour leftover so fill your dredging pan on an as needed basis. I put my excess mixture in a freezer bag and stored it in the freezer.

I used a Waring digital rotisserie turkey fryer (Model TF250). If your frying set up is smaller you might have to cook your chicken in batches. Lower oil temperatures are the enemy of crispiness. I cooked these for ~12 minutes and the internal temps were at 170+ºF well past the 165ºF food safety temperature and pretty close to perfect for dark meat.

I needed a quick shower before the potluck so I put these on a wire rack in a 250ºF oven. I transported then over to the party loosely tented with foil. I didn’t want to go through this process and end up offering up soggy fried chicken.

This chicken tasted great and I will definitely be making this recipe again. Whether it is the same spice mixture that KFC uses is besides the point. It is a great recipe and I don’t see myself making any changes to it.

An ancient Chinese secret about deep frying food was passed on to me by a friend… do it outside of the house if possible. Even though I used an indoor fryer, I know from past experience that the odours from frying will linger.

I also made some Armadillo Eggs aka “sausage slammers” more on those down the road.

Jim Letourneau's Blog

KFC and Me - Amazing Fried Chicken Recipe