Whimsy: September 2019 Archives
The Mysterious, Stubborn Appeal of Mass-Produced Fried Chicken - VICE
This article explains the complexity of frying chicken, why mass-production works so well, and why nicer restaurants either specialize in it or don't offer it at all. Makes you appreciate places like AQ Chicken House and Eischen's.
"When you drop cold chicken into a hot fryer, the temperature of the oil drops. A typical fryer will raise the temperature back to the set point as quickly as it can, usually somewhere between 325 and 350 degrees. That's bad for fried chicken. 'If you just had your oil at 350 degrees and started cooking bone-in chicken, the outside would get done before the inside,' Hays says. Popeyes fryers, however, hold at that lower temperature for eight to ten minutes, which allows the meat to cook through evenly. The temperature then rises back to the set point toward the end of the cooking process, which gets the skin nice and crispy after the meat has cooked through.
"The fryers, which are operated by touch screen, can be programmed to remember up to 20 different settings, though they typically only use a few (ones for breasts, thighs, wings, etc.). Just frying those segments separately makes a difference, too, as they all have different ratios of bone to meat to skin. The fryers also have features that make it easier to filter and change the oil, as well as instruments to measure the polarity of the oil so staff know exactly when it needs to be replaced....
"But it's not just the fryers. Unless you're dedicating a large part of your focus and your physical space to fried chicken, it's just not going to work. Fried chicken is a small part of Lee's menu at Succotash, for example--the dinner menu on the restaurant's website shows two entrees that include it and ten that do not, plus two dozen other appetizers, sides, and other dishes that do not--but he estimates that about 20 percent of his kitchen is devoted to it, which includes a brining station, a breading station, and two pressure fryers. 'It's similar to barbecue,' Lee says. 'You either do it or you don't. There's no way to half-ass it.'
"This kind of mental and resource drain for fried chicken is why Adkins serves fried chicken (pan-fried in Crisco) only on Wednesday nights at Sally's Middle Name. 'It's too much time to make properly every night,' Adkins says. 'It would slow things down.' So rather than being one-seventh of his menu all the time, it's basically the whole menu once every seven days."
