I made an incidental chili bread roll.

What I actually cooked tonight was spicy crispy chicken. We are all rather fond of the KFC-style spicy crispy chicken, but we also don’t actually go to KFC or similar fast food places more than about once every half year. So I figured I’d try making it myself, because surely it couldn’t be that hard. The recipe that I found for it called for brining and an egg mixture and a way of preparing that would take way too long, so I took shortcuts.

The chicken strips that we buy in Denmark comes pre-brined, so that cut away the 3 hour brining step. The recipe also calls for putting the seasoning blend on the chicken, then doing the whole egg and flour thing. I skipped straight to the egg.

Ingredients that I used:

  • 375 g pre-brined chicken strips
  • 1 egg
  • 160 g flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 heaping teaspoon garlic powder
  • random amounts of black pepper powder, paprika powder, cayenne pepper powder, and chili powder

And fats for frying:

  • salted butter
  • salted easy spread “butter”
  • olive oil

Steps that I took, in order:

  1. Crack the egg in a hermetically sealable container capable of holding all 2-3 times the combined ingredients. It should be the right size where shaking it would aerate and cover all the chicken.
  2. Drain the brine from the chicken.
  3. Put the chicken in the container.
  4. Seal and shake the container until there’s egg on all the chicken.
  5. In a separate open container, mix the flour, baking powder, and garlic powder.
  6. Mix in spices until the flour mix tastes good and strong enough to your liking. I found that the initial amount of garlic tasted through even when I added more of the various peppers, so I did not add more of that.
  7. Dump it all in the sealable container.
  8. Seal the container and shake until there’s mix on all the chicken.
  9. Heat frying pan to 7 of 9 and put a spoon of salted butter on it.
  10. When all the butter is melted, put all the chicken on the pan.
  11. Realize that the butter got absorbed almost instantly by the flour mix and that you’re out of butter, so add a spoon of easy spread “butter”.
  12. Realize that also got absorbed almost instantly, so give in and use oil like the recipe tells you to.
  13. Reapply oil when it dries out.
  14. Cook until done.
  15. Eat.

I had no idea what to expect from this. First time I’ve attempted something like this, so I figured it was a neat experiment, and if it didn’t taste good then it’s a learning opportunity. But oh wow, it was almost perfect. Tasted exactly like fast food spicy crispy chicken, just slightly less spicy. Was just as juicy. We ate it all, so didn’t get a picture of it.

I also realized that the leftover egg and flour mix in the container was basically bread dough, if I just added water. So I stirred (with a fork) in 250ml water, put it in a ceramic bowl, and put it in the cold oven, then turned it to 200 ℃ for 25 minutes. What came out is pictured above: A chili bread roll. Not great, but totally edible, and I look forward to having a slice with melted cheddar.

Mistakes made and corrections for future cooking:

  • Salt: The recipe calls for adding a teaspoon salt to the flour mix. I intended to do that, but I plain forgot. I figure the fact that I fried it in salted butter made up for that fact, because it all tasted great.
  • Water: I think that adding 100ml of water to the flour mix during the final shake could cause more of it to bind to the chicken. Today’s version was somewhat flat compared to fast food variants, but more batter should naturally rise more. Will try that next time.
  • Butter: Just don’t use butter. My mistake here was that I usually fry in a little bit of butter for the flavour, but actually the meat fries in its own fats. But the flour mix absorbs all the fats here, so there is nothing to fry in. I can’t recall when I last fried in oil, but this would’ve been unhealthy to keep slathering butter or “butter” on. Use oil.

So next time I make this, it will be perfect.