I like chicken in general and KFC is probably one that is reliably always there, because it is- there’s three within an 8 kilometre radius of where I live and work (South Auckland). But if other favourites were in the vicinity, it would be down there in my list.
When Auckland changed to Covid Alert Level 3 which meant that food places would be open, you couldn’t even order KFC- the demand was so high that deliveries were suspended. It was amusing for like 5 seconds; to sit in your car in a two-hour queue for take-away food is RETARDED.
I think part of my attraction to it was that I always thought that frying chicken was hard; or that it’s dangerous (latest accident was last year when I was frying some in a shallow electric-frying pan).
So I had to discard all my old and wrong frying habits (like watching stupid non-professional food vloggers), learn from the boring pros and voila- perfect chicken. Not that it was really that hard, to begin with, but it’s simply being mindful of tried and tested scientific principles of cooking:
Proportion of batter ingredients
Heating and cooking times (baseline for in-bone chicken pieces like a big drumstick is 14 min)
Resting the meat before serving
Frankly, I never really followed any of the above! When I felt like making it, I just did what I always did and moaned afterwards that it wasn’t satisfying for all the effort that went into it.
What we call chicken nibbles here is my favourite- you finish like 20 pieces and that’s not really a lot considering how little the meat is. This one above has two flavours; plain with just a dusting of chicken salt (turned out to be the better one) and Korean which was just alright.
Not going to type out the recipe: got it from below, the same peeps where I learned a fool-proof way to amazing roast crispy pork belly: