The Best Buttermilk-Brined Southern Fried Chicken Recipe
The Best Buttermilk-Brined Southern Fried Chicken Recipe Chicken gets brined in flavorful buttermilk before hitting the fryer for a crisp, golden crust. An intensely flavored buttermilk brine tenderizes the chicken while keeping it moist. Adding wet ingredients to the dry flour coating ensures an extra-craggy crust with lots of nooks and crannies. Starting in hot fat and finishing in the oven gives you fried chicken with a crisp crust and evenly cooked meat. For me, as a kid growing up in New York, fried chicken came from one place, and one place only: those grease-stained cardboard buckets peddled by the Colonel himself. But times have changed, and as is often the case, revisiting those fond childhood memories results only in disappointment and disillusionment. That said, stylistically, it can't be faulted. So I figured that I could somehow manage to take what the Colonel started and bring it to its ultimate conclusion—that is, deep chicken flavor; a flab-free skin; juicy, tende