But it went weird. I dredged the chicken in flour, dipped it in egg, then dipped it in panko (as per the recipe). And once I had the chicken in the oil, the covering promptly fell off the chicken and – well, actually, it browned up amazingly well and I was able to salvage the situation by constant stirring to keep the breading from burning while the chicken itself fried up. The whole thing ended up being tossed in the orange/sugar/chicken broth goop that I was making to coat the chicken, and it all tasted great when I put it over rice, but: the breading was still supposed to stay on the chicken.
What did I do wrong? Did I not grind the chicken into the panko? I probably should have ground the chicken into the panko.
So I did not watch the video, but I have two suspicions. One, is that I know when I waited tables in a Chinese restaurant in college that the cook always did the eggs first. And that is certainly what I would have done, just making this without looking for a recipe. But secondly and more important, I suspect the oil wasn’t nearly hot enough. Was this deep or pa fried? Depending on the burner strength I’d have initially heated the oil to 25 degrees past the target, especially if the chicken was cold, fresh out of the fridge. So to 375-400 or do initially unless my fryer was a hoss.
Echoing Skip ..
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Let the chicken approach (not reach, just .. approach) room temperature.
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Egg first, then flour, then panko, then into *very* hot oil.
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Consider carefully drizzling hot oil over the chicken to get the egg to cook.
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Gotta cook the egg because it’s the egg protein that sticks the breading to the chicken .. and if McDonalds can get it to work on an assembly line, I’m sure you can get it to work in your kitchen.
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Mew
Disagree with the two above.
Flour, then egg/milk mixture, then flour/breadcrumbs/whathaveyou.
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There are three potential points of failure.
The most likely is that the oil just wasn’t hot enough yet, or adding the chicken dropped it too far. Avoid this by testing the oil (droplets of water pop like firecrackers–go very easy on this, or you’ll be cleaning up a mess. One small drop is plenty.) And by cooking in small batches.
The others can be easily avoided by ensuring that the chicken is thawed enough that it no longer contains ice crystals, and by letting the beading set on the chicken for a few minutes before frying.
This looks good. I might try this tomorrow (that is, much later today.) but I think I will just use egg white and cornstarch. I’ve had really good results with that.
Takes notes.