Bacon got REALLY expensive the year before I left the chef life for the wide world of food sales. I ended up running this as a special on the bars but it’s become a staple for me whenever I get the craving.
Sourdough, dukes mayo, good tomato, lettuce, battered and fried chicken skins. You get that crunch and savory you want from a BLT at a WAY better price.
Can you share the process for making the fried skin?
Of course! We tried it two ways, but the most effective was this
-Dry your chicken skins
-Hold them in a brine of buttermilk, hot sauce, egg mix (purely for ease of use on line, I’d only leave them 15-20 minutes if you’re doing it at the house)
-Toss them in a flour dredge
-Once coated deep fry, you could probably get away with a pan fry with shallow oil but I was blessed with a deep fryer.
Drying the skins and then frying without the wet/dry mix did not yield the crisp you would want (just a warning).
Thank you!
Did you ever try blanching the skin before frying it? Here’s an article for getting crispy skin on chicken cooked sous vide, which isn’t exactly the same, but I wonder if the technique could apply here.
I’m going to look into that a little more, I get how it would work by making the skin on the breast contract but I feel like a quick pan fry before sous vide would give you the same effect with their application?
I feel like it should work? I’ll try it next time and get back with results. I’m wondering if leaving it with salt (the same way you would fake dry age a steak) would pull enough moisture out to crisp it without breading.
Thanks for giving me something to play with!
I should be thanking you for the interesting concept! Looking forward to your results!
How to keep them from curling up into a tube?
It was a crap shoot but I used the old two fry baskets together trick. Keeps them reasonably flat. You’ll still have a couple that get through… for home anything metal that you can hold something down with?
My process…place chicken skin in frying pan flat over medium heat. They release their own oil to fry them. They’ll release from the pan when they are ready to flip, but they will almost fry completely crispy by that point. Drain on paper towel, season with salt immediately out of the pan. You don’t need to do anything fancy to get nice crispy chicken cracklings. And you get smaltz out of the deal too.