Buttermilk is often used to marinate chicken before cooking it. The sour, acidic liquid makes the meat tender and adds flavor to it. Finding the right balance is important when soaking chicken in buttermilk. If you soak it for too long, the meat will become mushy, and if you soak it for too little time, you won’t get all the benefits. What length of time is enough? Let’s get into it.
The Benefits of Buttermilk for Chicken
Before you decide how long to soak the bread, it’s helpful to know why buttermilk works so well. Here are some of the main benefits:
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Breaks down chicken connective tissues, making it more tender. The lactic acid in buttermilk does this.
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Adds flavor – Buttermilk has a tangy acidic taste that infuses the chicken with flavor. Spices and herbs can be added to the buttermilk marinade as well.
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Keeps chicken moist—The fats and proteins in buttermilk help the chicken meat stay moist while it’s cooking.
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Promotes browning – Something in the buttermilk reacts with the chicken skin to promote more even browning and crisping when fried.
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Adheres coatings – The residual buttermilk left on the chicken helps breading and flour stick better for frying.
Recommended Buttermilk Soaking Times
To best utilize the benefits of buttermilk while avoiding overly mushy chicken, follow these general guidelines:
- Boneless chicken breasts – 30 minutes to 2 hours
- Chicken tenders – 2 to 4 hours
- Bone-in chicken (thighs, legs, wings) – 4 to 12 hours
- Whole chicken – 8 to 24 hours
Thinner cuts like boneless breasts and tenders absorb buttermilk faster so they only need a quick soak. Thicker pieces with bones and connective tissue benefit from a longer marinating time.
For super tender and flavorful chicken some cooks swear by soaking for a full 24 hours in the fridge. But it’s usually not worth going over 12 hours for bone-in chicken.
Tips for Soaking Chicken in Buttermilk
Follow these tips to properly soak chicken in buttermilk:
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Use cold buttermilk – Make sure your buttermilk is chilled before adding chicken. Don’t marinate at room temp.
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Season the buttermilk – Add salt, pepper, herbs and spices to the buttermilk to boost flavor.
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Turn the chicken – Occasionally flip and turn chicken during long soaks to ensure even exposure.
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Refrigerate – Always keep chicken soaked in buttermilk chilled at 40°F or below.
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Pat chicken dry – Lightly pat off excess buttermilk before frying or baking.
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Watch time – For food safety, don’t marinate raw chicken for longer than 24 hours.
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Discard used buttermilk – Never reuse buttermilk that has touched raw chicken due to contamination risk.
FAQs About Soaking Chicken in Buttermilk
Can you soak chicken in buttermilk too long?
Yes, it is possible to overdo it. Chicken soaked for over 24 hours may become unpleasantly mushy in texture. For best results, follow the recommended timeframes.
Does soaking chicken in buttermilk add flavor?
Absolutely! The tangy taste of buttermilk infuses into the chicken. You can amplify flavor by adding spices, herbs, hot sauce or garlic to the buttermilk.
Can you bread chicken right after soaking in buttermilk?
It’s best to let excess buttermilk drip off first for better adherence. Lightly patting chicken dry also helps the coating stick.
Is rinsing chicken after buttermilk soaking necessary?
Usually rinsing is not needed unless specified in a recipe. Residual buttermilk promotes browning and helps coatings adhere.
What can be used instead of buttermilk to soak chicken?
Plain yogurt, sour cream, kefir, milk mixed with vinegar or lemon juice all work as substitutes. Buttermilk gives the most authentic results.
Can you bake chicken right after soaking in buttermilk?
Yes, just be sure to pat off any excess liquid first. The buttermilk will help keep the baked chicken very moist and tender.
Does soaking chicken in buttermilk add calories?
There is minimal calorie increase since most buttermilk is rinsed or pat dried off before cooking. The tenderizing effect helps avoid frying longer, further reducing calories.
Is buttermilk marinade safe for chicken?
Properly handled, buttermilk is completely safe. Always keep chicken refrigerated at 40°F or below when marinating to prevent bacterial growth.
Alternative Marinades to Buttermilk
While buttermilk may be the most popular choice, here are some alternative marinades to try:
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Yogurt – Plain yogurt makes an excellent tenderizing marinade very similar to buttermilk.
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Milk & lemon – The combination of milk and lemon juice or vinegar mimics the tangy flavor of buttermilk.
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Brine – A saltwater brine solution keeps chicken incredibly moist and seasoned.
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Wine or beer – Marinating in wine or beer adds great flavor nuance to chicken.
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Fruit juice – Pineapple, orange or apple juice impart sweetness and tenderness.
Fun Ways to Use Buttermilk-Soaked Chicken
Don’t limit yourself to using buttermilk-soaked chicken only for fried chicken or nuggets. Try these tasty recipe ideas:
- Nashville hot chicken sandwiches
- Buttermilk ranch chicken wraps
- Baked chicken parmesan
- Buttermilk chicken curry with rice
- Buttermilk fried chicken waffles
- Buffalo chicken salad with blue cheese
- Chicken tortilla soup with buttermilk
- Buttermilk chicken & broccoli casserole
The possibilities are endless for putting tangy buttermilk-marinated chicken to delicious use!
The Bottom Line
Soaking chicken in chilled buttermilk for anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours helps make the meat incredibly tender, juicy and flavorful. Follow the recommended timeframes for different cuts to strike the right balance. Avoid over-soaking to prevent mushiness. Use your buttermilk-soaked chicken to add delicious flavor to both fried and baked chicken recipes.
Crust Lust: Making the Crunchiest Fried Chicken
Next up: add some extra crunch to that crust. I reasoned that there were a few ways to do this. First off, I wanted to increase the crusts thickness. I tried double-dipping my chicken—that is, dredging the brined chicken in flour (seasoned with the same spice blend as my brine), dipping it back into the buttermilk, and then dredging it once more in flour before frying, a method chef Thomas Keller uses for his justifiably famous fried chicken at Ad Hoc. This worked marginally better—that second coat definitely developed more crags than the first coat did. But it also made for an extremely thick breading that had a tendency to fall off the breast because of its heft. ***.
***You may notice the redness of the center of the chicken. This is not because it is undercooked, but because I cracked the bone when cutting it open, revealing some of the chickens red marrow. Sometimes bones will break on their own or while you’re breaking the chicken up, leaving some red spots inside the meat even after it’s cooked all the way through. This should not alarm you.
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In order to make the breading more stable, it would have been better to just add an egg to the buttermilk.
My crust was certainly thick enough now, but I ran into another problem: rather than crisp and crunchy, it was bordering on tough, almost rock-like in its density. Knowing that gluten—the network of proteins formed when flour meets water—was the most likely culprit, I sought out ways to minimize its formation. First, replace some of the protein-dense wheat flour with pure starch like cornstarch. This will help the breading absorb more water without adding extra protein. Replacing a quarter of the flour worked well. Adding a couple teaspoons of baking powder to the mix helped bring a bit of air to the mix, forming a crust that was lighter and crisper, with increased surface area (and we all know that more surface area = more crispness, right?).
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Finally, I used a trick that a friend, a former employee of the Chick-fil-A Southern fast-food fried-chicken chain had told me about. Hed mentioned that once the chicken was breaded, the later batches always come out better than the earlier ones as bits of the flour mixture clumped together, making for an extra-craggy coat. Adding a couple tablespoons of buttermilk to the breading mix and working it in with my fingertips before dredging the chicken simulated this effect nicely.****
****This method is also employed in Cooks Country magazines fried chicken recipe.
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The last problem—the coating overcooking long before the chicken is cooked through to the center—was simple to solve. Just fry the chicken until golden brown, then transfer it to a hot oven to finish cooking at a gentler pace. The result is chicken with a deep brown, craggy crust thats shatteringly crisp but not tough and that breaks away to meat that bursts with intensely seasoned juices underneath.
How to Make Buttermilk-Brined Southern Fried Chicken
I know how passionate people can get about fried chicken, and Im not one to tell you who makes the best, but if you were to ask Ed Levine, the Serious Eats overlord, hed tell you that its Guss, a sixty-seven-year-old institution in Mason, Tennessee. They serve fried chicken that he describes as incredibly crunchy, with a crisp, craggy crust, juicy meat, and a “cosmic oneness” between the breading and the skin. Were talking fried chicken so good that you have to resort to metaphysics to make sense of it.
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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. To my young mind, KFCs extra-crispy was about as good as it got. I distinctly remember eating it: picking the coating off in big, fat chunks; tasting the spicy, salty grease; and shredding the meat underneath with my fingers and delivering it to my waiting mouth. It was heavenly.
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But times have changed, and as is often the case, revisiting those fond childhood memories results only in disappointment and disillusionment. All over the country, theres a fried chicken and soul food renaissance going on. Even the fanciest restaurants in New York are adding it to their menus. My eyes and my taste buds have been opened to what fried chicken truly can be. I may still dig the ultracrunchy, well-spiced crust that KFC puts on its birds, but thats about the only thing it has going for it. Flaccid skin, dry and stringy breast meat, and chicken that tastes like, well, its hard to tell if it really tastes like anything once you get rid of the crust.
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That said, stylistically, it cant 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, tender meat; and crisp, spicy coating—I might just be able to recapture those first fleeting childhood tastes of fried chicken as I remembered them.