can anyone answer this question ,,,i'm stumped

One thing that places like kfc and popeyes do that we can't do at home is to pressure fry their chicken.  I'm convinced that this is the reason why they are able to infuse spices right down to the bone.

 

Have you tried marinating the chicken in buttermilk with spices?  I find that does the trick for me.  Some people even brine.  You have to infuse the chicken with the spices before you fry it.

KK your right.

 

This is what I use for spicy chicken. Sometimes its just not the spices in the marinade but also in the dry mix.

 

Spicy Fried Chicken - this recipe will easily coat 8 pieces of chicken

 

Marinade :

2 cups of Buttermilk

1 ½ Tbsp of Dijon

1 tsp salt

1 ½ tsp dry mustard powder

1 ½ tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp black pepper

 

Dry mix :

2 cups  Flour

1 Tbsp of baking powder

½ tsp of garlic powder

1/2 dry mustard

1  tsp cayenne

½ tsp salt

 

marinade for 2 hours in fridge , dredge in flour and fry.

 

If you would like your chicken with more heat , then double the cayenne to the dry mix.

 

just a thought.

 

Petals.

The key to spicy fried chicken is marinating.  You want to get the pepper deep into the meat, which takes a little time.  It doesn't necessarily have to be a buttermilk marinade, although like KK and Chef Petals I favor it as well for what it does in terms of tenderizing and tang.  However, I usually bring the heat with hot sauce rather than powdered or flaked peppers. 

 

Pressure frying has nothing to do with spicy chicken one way or the other, and for the little it's worth neither Popeye's nor Church's pressure fries. 

 

BDL

have you tried slicing into the chicken and rubbing the chillis into it,before you coat it as wellyou can use dried chilli flakes in the flour or bread crum mix.

these are some of the things i do for spicy chicken.

Marinade in your favorite hotsauce.  Don't use buttermilk.  Then coat with cayenne seasoned flour.

kuan is correct.  buttermilk neutralizes capsaicin--the casein in any dairy product does.  Marinate in hot sauce as suggested above or, take the advice of the best chicken-fryer I ever worked with: rinse chicken in ice cold water, then flour, then fry.  No batter, no egg-wash, no buttermilk, no yogurt, no dairy at all--use water.  The simpler the better, usually.  Heavily season your flour.

Do an injection marinade if you really want to really get the heat into the meat all the way through to the bone.

Capsaicin is oil soluble. So you lose some heat to the oil.

 

Fat tends to buffer intense flavors on the tongue to some degree and frying certainly adds fat.

 

Tell us more about your recipe and what you've tried to get more heat in the final product. Certainly increasing the amount of pepper you're using is one place to start.

 

 

 

 

Go extreme and see what happens

marinade:

make a cayenne (or your heat of choice) paste with water and coat your chicken--let it sit overnight

breading:

2 cups flour, 1/4 cup cayenne, 1 t salt

 

Use this on a few small pieces of chicken breast to see where it leads--then back off from there

 

Simple is better--potato flake, baking soda unnecessary

 

I would recommend injecting the chicken with your marinade. This is the only way to get it to penetrate deep into the meat. Soaking alone is not good enough. As mentioned previously, the capsaicin is fat soluble. Any spice on the surface or in the batter is going to be leeched out by the frying oil. Maybe by injecting it deeper into the meat, more spice can be retained.

For your vinegar problem, try to make your own( also previously mentioned). Grind some hot chiles( dried ones of course:-) ) add chicken broth, some of the herbs/ spices in your breading. Or you could try a different hot sauce. There are so many to choose from with all kinds of different flavor profiles. I've even stumbled on one that didn't have vinegar listed as an ingredient. Unfortunately I forget what it was called.

In my experience while buttermilk (or yogurt) may take some edge off the chilies it hardly neutralizes them, and it's an effective medium for getting the flavor into the meat.  I would make a marinade with copious amounts of strong ground chili powder, make a few slashes in the meat, and marinate overnight.  I agree injecting would be ideal.

 

One of my current favorites is Reshampatti chili powder from Indian stores; Kashmiri chili powder can also be very good if it's fresh.

How come nobody has suggested using a spicier chile pepper? 1 tsp of cayenne on a single piece of chicken wouldnt be enough for me! How about adding 1 couple tsp of habinero powder to the mix? Or some chipotle powder? Also try a double coat after marinating and dredging then dip in your favorite hot sauce and dredge a second time.

My experience with using buttermilk or yogurt as the liquid portion of a chicken marinade is in line with what Colin said.  I have no trouble getting plenty of heat marinating in buttermilk.  I like using buttermilk for the tang it brings, for the odors it subdues, and for its tenderizing.  And, as or more often, I use water or juice based brines for their qualities.  As to the heat:  Again, no problem.

 

Of course, when prepping "spicy" chicken, I'm not going for habanero like intensity (although I like using them or habanero based sauces as the heat component), but something at about the same level as Church's or Popeye's "Spicy" in fried; and somewhere edging past "hot," but not quite "atomic" for Buffalo and barbecued.    

 

I don't inject chicken because it marinates (or brines) so quickly, a consequence of the type of flesh and the small piece size.  Also the size makes it more PITA than its worth to do a nice, even injection.  Not saying you shouldn't do it, just that I don't anymore.  I don't inject ribs, either. 

 

BDL

We have used a 'hot-pot' in the past when doing hot and spicy chicken wings. (sorry for the bad pun!)

 

Basically its a pot of canola oil that we have infused with a lot of hot chili's we keep it at 375 and fry our chicken in it to order.

 

The chicken is brined (more for seasoning than keeping things moist) then slow cooked in an oven till done but not dried out.  (if you have the time and space confit the wings instead)

Coated with rice flour then frozen on sheet pans, transferred to storage containers and kept frozen.

 

We then cook from frozen to order in the chili-oil.

 

As the oil gets used up we keep topping it up with more dried ground hot peppers eventually the peppers burn and the flavor changes, not bad just very smoky / different, kind of asian / chinse dark chili oil.

 

Anyway this gives our wings an intense hot crispy coating and a nice juicy mellow interior.

 

 

double tap.... 

 

The "big boys" vacuum tumble their chicken: Meat and marinade goes into a s/s cylinder, vacuum applied, and the sucker tumbled for about 15 mins.  Meat sucks up all the marinade. This is why you can get get meat with "17% protein added" or "flavour enhanced" meat.  You buy by weight and the marinade is cheaper then meat.

 

Marinading is probably the best way to go if you want a deep spicy flavour.  If you have a "food saver" or any other vacuum type device, you can marinade under vacuum and it will do a pretty good job of infusing flavour.

 

Hope this helps

I am just taking a shot in the dark here, but here's what I would do: I would up the Scoville unit ante with a more potent, better flavored, fresh chili. I would then toss some of this into a brine that enhances the flavors of the chili, rather than focusing on spice, so that I don't end up with something rancid smelling. Then I'd let that soak - time depending on whether I'm doing pieces, or a whole chicken to later butcher. Then I'd assemble a cautious, standard spice rub- basic seasoning, as burned peppers taste pretty foul, and they can burn in the deep fryer. Plus, their spice would mostly be cooked off. Certainly watch the amount of dairy (not off limits, but stick to buttermilk or less fat, would be my suggestion), and cooking time, as you will cook off your heat. I like the idea of incorporating chili oil, and I like the idea of perhaps having a spiced up liquid dredge portion to the flouring process. Before the frying though, I might look into potentially cooking the chicken sous vide with its spices. Simple to do at home with a zip-loc or similar sealed plastic bag, a thermometer, a silicone pad, and a low temperature flame...and a jug of ice water nearby.

 

I love spicy food, so this is a good test for me.

 

Personally, I'm a sucker for sauces anyhow...but I'll give this a go.

 

Why don't you try baking the chicken instead of frying it? I have a spicy chicken recipe if you'd like it, but it's spicy as in Indian spices. You can have it as firery as you like, I'll post it to you, just say.