Ad Hoc at Home: Buttermilk Fried Chicken

This was actually the second dish I made from the Ad Hoc cookbook which is also a restaurant owned by Thomas Keller.  This restaurant specializes in family style dishes in a much more casual atmosphere than The French Laundry.  I didn't blog about the first dish I made from the book because I did a terrible job documenting it.

Needless to say, I'm back with a vengeance on this one, with a very simple dish that every red blooded American loves, fried chicken.

The first step, and probably the second most important component of this dish was the brine, prior to cooking the chicken.  Brine is intended to infuse flavor and moisture into the meat via osmosis.  This particular version included lemon juice, black pepper, salt, garlic, honey, water, bay leaves, thyme and parsley.  I brought the mixture to a simmer, then let it cool.

While the brine was cooking and cooling down, I dismantled a chicken into ten pieces and then placed the parts into the brine for 12 hours.

Fried chicken is made or broken by the crust.  This particular crust is a method I don't use very often, a seasoned flour.  I typically tend to find that I'd much rather season the meat directly over the crust that is likely to either fall off or get eaten without including the meat in the bite.  This particular curst was flour, salt, pepper, cayenne, onion powder, garlic powder and paprika.

I split the crust ingredients into two vessels because this chicken is a double breaded version where the chicken goes into the flour then the buttermilk and back into the flour before being dropped into the fryer.  

I fried the chicken up in my wonderful cast iron pan in plenty of peanut oi.

This is what the chicken looked like after coming out.  I didn't really do any fancy plating with this, but part of that was a timing issue.  My wife only likes white meat, and given how touchy fried chicken can be as far as when the best time to eat it after coming out of the fryer and the different cooking times I cooked her white meat first and let her eat and then I cooked my dark meat. 

My skepticism of the seasoned flour led me to put a little bit more seasoning on the meat before putting the crust on which unfortunately when combined with the brine lead to over seasoned meat.  But overall, this is one of my favorite versions I've ever had.