Why Soak Chicken in Buttermilk? The Secret to Perfectly Juicy and Flavorful Fried Chicken

Inside Out: Brine Before You Fry

I started with a working recipe of chicken pieces simply dipped in buttermilk and tossed in flour seasoned with salt and black pepper, then fried in peanut oil at 325°F until cooked through. A few problems immediately became clear. First off, timing: By the time my chicken was cooked through (thats 150°F in the breasts and 165°F in the legs), the outer crust was a dark brown, bordering on black in spots. Not only that, but it didnt have nearly as much crunch as I wanted. Finally, the meat underneath the crust wasnt completely desiccated, but I wouldnt exactly describe it as moist, not to mention its rather bland flavor. I decided to fix my chicken from the inside out.

*For those of you squeamish about “undercooked” chicken or who insist that breast meat must be cooked to 165°F to be safe and tasty, please read this discussion on real world food safety, which is quite different from what the U.S. government would have you believe.

The problem is that with fried chicken, the crisp well-seasoned coating is merely a surface treatment. None of that flavor penetrates very deeply. Surely brining and/or marinating should help with that problem? Brining is the process by which a lean meat (most often chicken, turkey, or pork) is submerged in a saltwater solution. As the meat sits, the saltwater will slowly dissolve key muscle proteins—most notably myosin, a protein that acts as a sort of glue, holding muscle fibers together). As the myosin dissolves, three things take place:

• First, the ability of the meat to hold onto moisture increases. You can imagine meat as a series of long, skinny toothpaste tubes tied together. As you cook the meat, the tubes of toothpaste get squeezed, pushing out valuable juices. Breading will help mitigate this effect to a degree by slowing down the transfer of energy to the meat, but a significant amount of squeezing is still going to occur regardless of how well breaded the chicken is. Myosin is one of the key proteins responsible for this squeezing action, so by dissolving it, you prevent a lot of moisture loss from taking place.
• Second, brining alters the texture of the meat by allowing dissolved proteins to cross-link with each other. This is the main principle behind sausage making—dissolved proteins can bond with each other, creating a pleasantly bouncy, tender texture. By brining a chicken breast or a pork chop, youre in effect giving it a very light cure—the same process that converts a raw ham into a supple prosciutto.
• Third, as the brine slowly works its way into the meat, it seasons it beyond just the very surface. An overnight brine will penetrate a few millimeters into the meat, giving you built-in seasoning before you ever get to the breading. Brines also improve juiciness by increasing the muscles ability to retain moisture. My normal brining for chicken breast is anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. In this case, however, a much, much longer brining time was necessary in order to completely mitigate the effects of high-temperature frying, delivering a uniquely smooth, juicy texture to the meat.

A full six hours submerged in salt/sugar water produced the beauty below. Weighing the meat confirmed that an overnight-brined-then-fried bird loses about nine percent less moisture than an unbrined bird does and is significantly tastier.

Ive experimented with tossing certain animal preparations with a mixture of baking powder and salt a day in advance in order to improve their crispness. The salt acts as a brine, while the baking powder raises the pH of the skin, causing it to brown more efficiently and the thin film of protein-rich liquid around it to form microbubbles that can add crispness. I tried this method on my fried chicken, but it ended up drying the skin out too much, making it tough to get the breading to remain attached down the line.

Knowing that Id be soaking my chicken in buttermilk the next day anyway, I wondered if Id be able to kill two birds with one stone by replacing the water in the brine with buttermilk. Not only did the chicken come out just as moist as with water brine, it was actually significantly more tender as well, due to the tenderizing effects of buttermilk on food (soaking it for more than one night led to chicken that was so tender that it bordered on mush). Finally, hitting the buttermilk with spices helped build flavor right into the surface of the bird. I played around a bit with the mix before arriving at a blend of cayenne pepper and paprika (for their heat and peppery flavor), garlic powder**, a bit of dried oregano, and a healthy slug of freshly ground black pepper. The Colonel may use eleven secret herbs and spices in his chicken recipe, but five was quite enough for me (and both my wife and my doorman heartily concurred).

**Some folks shun garlic powder, saying that its nothing like real garlic. I agree: garlic powder is nothing like real garlic. But that doesnt mean it doesnt have its culinary uses. Its particularly effective in spice rubs and breadings, where fresh garlic would be difficult to incorporate, due to its texture.

How to Make Buttermilk-Brined Southern Fried Chicken

I know how passionate people can get about fried chicken, and Im not one to tell you who makes the best, but if you were to ask Ed Levine, the Serious Eats overlord, hed tell you that its Guss, a sixty-seven-year-old institution in Mason, Tennessee. They serve fried chicken that he describes as incredibly crunchy, with a crisp, craggy crust, juicy meat, and a “cosmic oneness” between the breading and the skin. Were talking fried chicken so good that you have to resort to metaphysics to make sense of it.

For me, as a kid growing up in New York, fried chicken came from one place, and one place only: those grease-stained cardboard buckets peddled by the Colonel himself. To my young mind, KFCs extra-crispy was about as good as it got. I distinctly remember eating it: picking the coating off in big, fat chunks; tasting the spicy, salty grease; and shredding the meat underneath with my fingers and delivering it to my waiting mouth. It was heavenly.

But times have changed, and as is often the case, revisiting those fond childhood memories results only in disappointment and disillusionment. All over the country, theres a fried chicken and soul food renaissance going on. Even the fanciest restaurants in New York are adding it to their menus. My eyes and my taste buds have been opened to what fried chicken truly can be. I may still dig the ultracrunchy, well-spiced crust that KFC puts on its birds, but thats about the only thing it has going for it. Flaccid skin, dry and stringy breast meat, and chicken that tastes like, well, its hard to tell if it really tastes like anything once you get rid of the crust.

That said, stylistically, it cant be faulted. So I figured that I could somehow manage to take what the Colonel started and bring it to its ultimate conclusion—that is, deep chicken flavor; a flab-free skin; juicy, tender meat; and crisp, spicy coating—I might just be able to recapture those first fleeting childhood tastes of fried chicken as I remembered them.

Chicken and Buttermilk Is a Match Made In Heaven Part #1

FAQ

How long should you let chicken sit in buttermilk?

Allow plenty of time to soak the chicken in buttermilk. At least 4-8 hours (or overnight) is ideal; however, in a pinch you can shorten this time to about 30 minutes.

Why should I soak chicken in buttermilk?

Why Brine Chicken in Buttermilk? Buttermilk tenderizes the chicken while keeping it moist. Brining chicken 24-hours in buttermilk ensures your chicken will be tender, juicy, and packed full of flavor. I mean, nobody likes dry flavorless chicken!

What does buttermilk do to a chicken?

The buttermilk and salt work like a brine, tenderizing the meat on multiple levels; the water it contains increase moisture, and the salt and acid it contains disables proteins, preventing them from squeezing liquid from the meat as the bird cooks.

Do you rinse meat after soaking in buttermilk?