Gluten Free Fried Chicken

My wife is the one in the family who usually makes fried chicken for us for dinner, but the other day I was getting ready to cook and asked my son what type of chicken I should make, and he said "chicken strips".

I thought about it for a while and decided rather than thawing another chicken breast to add to the two that I would remove from the whole bird I had before me, I would make fried chicken.  Since I love my wife's version so well, I called her and asked about her recipe.

Her recipe is based on one that a line cook that worked for me used to make.  His name was George and hailed from Memphis, Tennessee.  George was a character.  Like many line cooks that I have worked with or who have worked for me, he had a colorful life and language to match it.

Unlike many cooks, George's language was not peppered with expletives, it was more of a southern down home sort of speak.  That mixed with a little Oakland CA vernacular.  George would talk about going out to the bar with his girlfriend and getting home later that night and being "toe up".

O.K. So maybe I'm a little sheltered, but I thought he was talking about being inebriated and "torn up", to be honest with his accent, part Tennessee part Oakland, that's what I thought he was saying.  It was years later that I realized he really meant Toe Up, as in flat on my back like a cadaver.

I wonder how many other things he said to me that I completely missed.

Anyway, the an made great fried chicken.  My wife and son are gluten intolerant, so we have made adjustments to a lot of our recipes.  I think that she has hit a home run with this one.

Here is my wife's recipe for Gluten Free Fried Chicken.

She told me she "eyeballs" this recipe, and that the final breading she judges as much from the smell as from the look.

Equal parts of rice flour and fine corn meal

Ground cumin

Granulated garlic (or garlic powder)

Kosher salt

Black pepper

One egg, slightly beaten

Really simple.

I used a cup of each the rice flour and corn meal, 

2 Tablespoons of the cumin and 2.5 Tablespoons of the granulated garlic.  

If you use garlic powder, use less as it is much stronger in flavor.  And maybe about 2.5 Tablespoons of the kosher salt.

Put all of this into a plastic bag, the kind that they have in the produce department of your local grocery and make sure it it well combined.

Break the chicken down into drumsticks, thighs, wings and breasts.  If you need instructions on how to do this see my "How to cut a chicken 101" post.  Remember to leave some of the ribs attached to the breasts.  

Cut the breasts into two pieces.  

This will give you ten pieces of fried chicken when you are done.

To fry the bird, use a pan that has high sides, four inches or so if you have one like that.  If you don't, it just means your likely to have more oil to clean up from the stove top when you are finished.

I put about two and a half inches of oil into the pan and turned the heat on high.  Your goal is about 375F.

If you do not have a thermometer for your oil, you can use the handle of a wooden spoon to check the temp of the oil.  When you dip the handle into the oil, it should just barely bubble, king of like how champagne looks in a glass.

Heat your oven to 220F for holding the cooked pieces while the rest are working.

Take each piece of chicken and roll it in the egg and the put it in the bag.  

Close the top of the bag tightly and shake it about a bit until it is completely encased.  You can do 3-4 pieces at a time for this.

Pull the chicken from the bag and gently add it to the hot oil.  It is important to add them gently as if you were to just toss them in, they'll splash the hot oil and make a mess or worse, give you one heck of a burn.  

FYI: If you let the oil get too hot, like I did at first, the spices in your breading will burn slightly.  As long as it is not super hot, this shouldn't change the flavor very much.  It just doesn't look as good.

After the chicken has been in the oil for about two minutes, turn it in the pan with your tongs and cook it in the other side.

There are two ways to tell when the chicken has been cooked through, one is to test how firm the meat has become, the other is to us a meat thermometer.  I prefer to test the firmness of the meat.  After a while this will become second nature. Remember that the breasts will cook a little faster and cannot take as much time in the oil as a thigh or leg that have a larger bone in them and take a little longer to cook.  The health department says 165F internal temp is when the chicken is ready, use that for the legs and thighs, the breast should be pulled at 145F maximum in my opinion, this way they are still moist.

In both cases, if the oil is at the correct temperature, your gluten free fried chicken should look like this.

As each piece is done, remove it to a sheet pan with a rack on it and hold it in the 220F oven.  The rack is important because it prevents the chicken from sitting in the oil that will drip off of it while it is holding, thus preserving the crispy outer layer.

Once all of the chicken is cooked, call everyone to the table, dinner is served.