Don Mauer has to invent a new word to describe this chicken
The idea of "oven-fried" chicken has been around for decades. When low-fat food plans were the thing, many folks created recipes for oven-frying chicken breasts. Most "oven-fried" methods, including mine, didn't even come close to the flavor and crunch of deep-fat fried chicken. It's the fat used in frying that's so intimately linked to fried chicken's taste.
Over the last year, I've played with different ways to season skinless, boneless organic chicken thighs before roasting them. I've shared with you the 11 herbs and spices recipe that the Colonel's distant relative revealed in an interview. The scent of that Not-the-KFC chicken had the aroma of the Colonel's chicken, but when it came to the taste, it did not match the Colonel's. Nope.
Recently, I tried making oven-fried chicken thighs with a little organic ghee (clarified butter) in the roasting pan and coated with flour, salt and fresh ground black pepper mixture.
Two amazing things happened. Since I didn't crowd the pan in which they roasted, there was no liquid accumulating in the pan's bottom and the light, seasoned flour coating clung nicely to the chicken.
What blew me away was the chicken's flavor; this minimally-seasoned, oven-fried chicken tasted just like the fried chicken my Mom made more than 50 years ago. Wow!
Soon after that, I came across a recipe that claimed it could produce "crunchy" deep-fat fried chicken, the one thing I'd never seen done with oven-fried chicken. I'd never even tried it since that "crunch" was the result of a thick flour coating and deep fat frying.
My success with the oven-roasted, lightly-coated chicken thighs got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could create crunch with a special coating and an unusually high oven temperature.
Eighteen years ago, I created a recipe for brining the chicken in buttermilk that produced a moist and flavorful oven-roasted chicken. I wondered if I bumped-up the salt so that brining took an hour and not eight hours, I could keep the chicken from drying-out at such a high oven temperature.
Next, I found a recipe that mixed some of the same buttermilk used to brine the chicken into the seasoned flour, so the flour clumped, producing a thicker coating. Besides the usual suspects used to season the flour, I also added some sweet paprika to help the crust brown.
A gallon zipper-lock bag made it a cinch to make my brine with grass-fed, whole buttermilk and sea salt and to hold the chicken. Easy.
As my organic, boneless, skinless chicken thighs brined, I got everything ready. I set out two pans. One to hold the seasoned chicken on a rack and another pan for the oven. Also, I mixed-up the dry ingredients for the seasoned flour and added a quarter-cup of buttermilk just before the chicken was ready to exit the brine.
I loved the way my chicken looked covered in flour coating; almost fluffy. I melted the ghee in the roasting pan and then placed the chicken on the pan on the same side that would have had skin. That way the ghee fried the flour and browned it. After 10 minutes, I flipped the thighs over. After 25 minutes, in-and-out of the oven. Done.
My new chicken looked amazing; brown and crisp. Right from the first bite, I knew I'd created what I call "crunchilicious" chicken, without deep fat frying. The crust crunched, and the meat under it was juicy, tender and flavorful.
This recipe is a keeper.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.