Sous vide fried chicken?

Back on the sous vide topic, has anyone done the SV fried chicken recipe, where you SV the chicken first and then quickly deep fry the coated chicken to get the crispy exterior? Is it worth the extra time/effort?

Bruce

I haven’t done it. However, I’d be worried that the chicken would get over-cooked because you really do need a decent amount of time in the fryer to get that crispy outside.

I’ve done it and it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Something about the skin never comes out quite right. It has this rubbery quality to it that never really seems to crisp up entirely.

Sounds like a way to make a simple dish more complicated and require more clean up.

I once did it where I took the skin off, then fried the skin separately. Pretty tasty.

If I had to do it again that’s exactly what I’d do, but if I’m going to the trouble of setting up a frying station anyways I’d rather just do it the old-fashioned way from the beginning.

I have done it several times. I love it. I use the Ad Hoc brine and brine it overnight, I rinse the chicken and sous vide it, then I use the Ad Hoc dredging instruction and fry it for a couple minutes. It is the best way I have found to make fried chicken for a crowd (say more than 4 people). And, for me, it’s the best way to achieve fully cooked, deliciously tender chicken meat AND a super-crispy, not-burned outer layer.

Off the top of my head, I cannot remember the times and temps, but I use an approach that combines the Serious Eats articles on Sous Vide chicken breasts/thighs and the Joule app.

I think it is much, much better if you remove the skin.

Scott

Here’s ChefSteps recipe:

I have done sous vide chicken parm. I like a thick cutlet for this… cook sous vide, shock in ice, remove from bag, flour > egg > bread crumbs and a quck fry and you’re there. way better than trying to get it cooked through without burning or drying out on stove top or finishing in the oven.

The one time I tried this it didn’t work out. Of course that was the one time I tried fried chicken, so the problem was likely operator error.

Not necessarily operator error. That’s the recipe I’ve used and the skin just remains rubbery. Once skin goes in the sous vide it becomes irredeemable.

I was obliquely referring to myself.

What was wrong with it Tom?

I haven’t tried the recipe, but I read through the 4 1/2 pages of comments and there were 4 or 5 that said the same thing as you. And then a couple of dozen that said it was the best fried chicken evah. One of the CS folks replied that he likes it that way. So maybe it is a personal preference, or there is a trick that is not apparent to me.

Will have to try it one of these days…

Never browned up, oil probably not hot enough. This was my first time deep frying.

That recipe fried super hot — 400F. I could see that being an issue.

Here’s how it turned out:
chicken.jpg
This was just a test of the recipe (350 degrees), with boneless, skinless chicken thighs. If I do it again, I’ll marinate the chicken overnight in
buttermilk and a good dash of hot sauce. The flour mix also could use more spices and cayenne to add some kick.

But overall, it was tasty and crunchy. Don’t know if it was “better” than traditional fried chicken but it didn’t suck.

Bruce

But would you do this in preference to a traditional fried chicken recipe (non-sous vide)?

I would like to do a blind taste test between the two to see which is “better.”

One advantage of the SV fried chicken is that the frying only takes a few minutes, since the interior is already cooked. So if you want to make fried chicken for a large
dinner party, you can do the frying stage MUCH faster than the typical 20 minutes per piece non-SV. Over several batches of frying, the time savings would really add up.

Bruce

I have never done SV fried chicken, but I do have a lot of experience with SV’ing proteins, I suspect that the SV skin retains (or, likely gains a lot) too much water to do much other than essentially boil unless you fry for a long time. At the basic level, you want the skin to have very little water and the meat to retain a lot. It seems that would be difficult in a SV set up.