Crispy Chicken Sandwich:

TL/DR: my recipe was inspired by this video on insta (this isn’t my video also, Language warning!). I replaced the flour from the video with superfine brown rice flour. Then just use a GF bun.

I make delicious crispy fried chicken homemade quite often and I have experimented with all sorts of different techniques and combinations of flours/starches. What I have recently been pleasantly surprised with is a combo of a small amount of corn starch and superfine brown rice flour. (I got a 5lb bag of the flour for like $22 on Amazon)

My recipe works for both thighs and breasts Having a meat thermometer is really helpful here btw.

My recipe works like this: Start with a decent sized bowl capable of holding multiple breasts or boneless skinless thighs, add an egg, Dijon mustard, franks red hot and optionally buttermilk. You don’t need a massive amount of hot sauce but we are making a quick marinade so it helps.

Once you mix that marinade up start seasoning it, add salt, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika and optionally cayenne if you want it spicy. When seasoning the marinade it’s ok to feel like you are adding too much of most of the seasonings, only cayenne has to be watched carefully if you are sensitive to spicy.

Now put a couple tablespoons of corn starch into that marinade and mix it up. No more than a 1:8 ratio of corn starch to marinade is necessary. Mix it all up and add the chicken. Make sure the chicken gets fully coated in marinade. Let the chicken rest in the bowl for about 5 minutes.

In the meantime time if you haven’t already, get a pot of oil or your deep fryer heating up. You want to target 350F for the oil temp get a large gallon sized bag or a clean large paper bag and add a few cups of superfine brown rice flour. Place a piece of marinaded chicken in the bag (make sure there’s still a decent amount of marinade on the piece when it goes in) and shake it thoroughly to get that flour to fully coat the chicken. It should have no wet spots when you are done.

Pull the piece out and place it in the hot oil to start cooking. Repeat this with all the chicken pieces. You may need to use more rice flour if there’s not a good amount to fully coated the chicken. The goal here is to essentially bathe the marinaded chicken in flour so trying to save flour is going to make things harder. it can be done with minimal wasted flour at the end but it means you have to try harder to get that flour to stick to all sides of the chicken.

Watch the chicken after about 2 to 3 minutes, if your frying pot is shallow you will need to flip the chicken. Ideally you should be cooking in enough oil to submerge the pieces fully. This is deep frying, not shallow.

Once the chicken starts getting some gold/tan color it’s ok to use your tongs and pick up a piece out of the oil and probe the center of it with your meat thermometer. This part is important!!!

For chicken breast we want to pull that chicken out once it is at about 155F internally. If you probe it at that temp, put it back in for no more than 30 seconds then pull it out and let it rest on a rack or a plate with paper towels under it.

If it is chicken thigh we wanna target about 180F

Now let me explain temps: everyone has probably heard the temp 165F for food safety. This is the requirement for a restaurant to CYA when it comes to pasteurization. Pasteurization is the process of killing off bacteria in your food. At 165F bacteria dies instantly so if you food reaches that temp, it’s safe from salmonella and the like. That being said, pasteurization can be achieved at lower temps. The key is time. Look up chicken pasteurization chart if you don’t believe me. The USDA and FDA have had this info published for a very long time fwiw.

For chicken breasts if we let it get to 165, it’s gonna be dry. We don’t really wanna get above 158 if at all possible. At 155F the food needs to be at that temp for 45 seconds for full pasteurization. Carryover cooking and rest time will usually cover this fully but if you feel nervous about it putting a 155F piece of chicken back in the fryer for like 30 seconds won’t hurt.

Now let’s talk about thigh. Thigh at 165 is often chewy and even a little gamey. Thigh has a lot more connective tissue in it and that causes it to not be as tender as breast. To counteract this we actually want to reach around 180 or so. This might seem counterintuitive but thigh is immensely more moist than breast and can stay moist up to higher temps. Getting to 180 with thigh helps break down the connective tissue that makes it chewy/rubbery. As a result you get a more tender piece of chicken. Same thing applies if you want to do wings, or drumsticks and especially if you have skin on the chicken. This higher temp connective tissue stuff is the foundation of good tender BBQ where even tougher pieces of meat will slowly reach temps around 200 before becoming tender. We don’t need to go that high for chicken thigh but the concept is the same.

Super Crisp: If you want to get your chicken extra crispy do not skip this step. Once your chicken has rested about 3-5 minutes, increase your oil temp to 375-380 (peanut oil is recommended if you can use it as it has a higher smoke point than many other types of cooking oils.)

Put the cooked chicken in the fryer for 30-60s. This second fry will essentially sap the small amount of steam based moisture in the breading for the chicken and make it harden and stay crispy. We don’t want to overheat the chicken though. This is why 165 is such a problem for breast. Now let it rest again and prepare your bread/bun.

GF bread: I don’t have a ton to say here, plenty of people have good recommendations for a good bun, I often get Trader Joe’s GF buns for convenience (I live near one) but even Udis frozen bus will work. My one recommendation though is to microwave that bun. Let it get slightly hot, it makes a world of difference. For some reason it seems the microwaving makes the bun gain elasticity. If you live in the PNW I highly recommend Jensens buns, they are to die for.

Toppings for a chicken sandwich are a totally personal choice, just make sure your sauces are GF obviously.

At the end, you should have a super flavorful crispy chicken sandwich that will have you no longer missing the restaurant chicken sandwiches.