Buttermilk is a staple ingredient in many fried chicken recipes, But have you ever wondered why it’s so commonly used for marinating chicken before frying? There’s actually a science-backed reason that makes buttermilk a magical ingredient for preparing succulent and delicious fried chicken Keep reading to uncover the secrets behind this timeless southern tradition!
Buttermilk Tenderizes Chicken Beautifully
The number one reason to soak chicken in buttermilk before breading and frying is that the buttermilk works to tenderize the meat. How exactly does it achieve this? It has to do with buttermilk’s acidic nature.
The lactic acid contained within buttermilk slightly breaks down the chicken’s tough protein structures. This makes the meat more tender and less likely to become chewy or tough when cooked. The acid works its tenderizing magic gradually over the recommended marinating time of 4-24 hours.
By giving the chicken enough time to marinate, the buttermilk changes the texture for the better. In the end, the chicken is so tender that it melts in your mouth, which is hard to do any other way.
Buttermilk Makes Chicken More Juicy and Flavorful
The acidic buttermilk marinade not only makes the chicken tender, but it also helps it keep its moisture. This is because the protein breakdown helps the meat hold on to more juices as it cooks.
Rather than becoming dry, the chicken turns out deliciously moist and succulent. This effect enhances the overall flavor, making the chicken taste even better.
The buttermilk also imparts its own rich, tangy flavor to the meat. This adds extra complexity while allowing any spices or seasonings to shine through brightly.
Because the flavor and moisture are better, buttermilk-marinated chicken is just more juicy and tasty. The extra step of marinating is well worth it because these qualities make your mouth water.
Buttermilk Helps Adhere the Coating
Finally, buttermilk provides benefits even after the marinating stage. Itsresidual presence on the meat helps the flour-based fried coating adhere.
Rather than a dry breading that flakes off, the buttermilk creates a tacky surface for the coating to cling to. This gives the crisp exterior excellent coverage and a satisfying crunch.
So buttermilk is very important for the best coating adhesion and the signature contrast of a juicy inside and a crunchy outside.
The Ideal Buttermilk Marinating Time
To reap all the tenderizing, moisturizing, and flavor-boosting benefits of buttermilk, aim for a minimum marinating time of 4 hours. Overnight or up to 24 hours is ideal.
This gives the lactic acid plenty of time to work its magic. While the chicken hangs out in the buttermilk bath, you can also allow any added seasonings to deeply penetrate.
Don’t be afraid to leave it longer than necessary. The buttermilk preserves and protects the meat, so there’s no risk of it “over-marinating.”
Can You Substitute Regular Milk?
The short answer is no. Plain milk lacks the acidity needed to tenderize the chicken. Buttermilk’s unique tang provides chemical properties you just can’t replicate with regular milk.
However, you can easily make a buttermilk substitute at home by souring milk with an acid like vinegar or lemon juice. The resulting reaction mimics true buttermilk.
To make about 1 cup, simply add 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to 1 cup of milk. Allow it to sit for 5 minutes before using. Now you’ve got homemade buttermilk ready for marinating!
Should You Rinse After Marinating?
It may seem logical to rinse off the buttermilk before breading and frying, but this extra step is unnecessary. Leaving the chicken coated in buttermilk actually improves coating adhesion.
The residual buttermilk helps the flour and breadcrumbs stick better than if rinsing it off. So go ahead and start breading immediately after pulling the chicken from the buttermilk bath.
Give Buttermilk Fried Chicken a Try
Now that you know the science behind buttermilk’s benefits, it’s time to put it to the test! Try marinating your next batch of fried chicken in buttermilk overnight and see the juicy, tenderizing difference it makes.
You’ll fall in love with the magnified moisture and flavor – it takes this southern staple to a whole new level. Once you experience the magic of buttermilk chicken, you’ll never go back to plain fried chicken again.
So embrace this time-tested technique and you’ll be rewarded with the most delectable, foolproof fried chicken you’ve ever made. Satisfy your cravings and impress your guests with this easy upgrade that makes all the difference. Buttermilk truly is the secret ingredient for fried chicken perfection!
Inside Out: Brine Before You Fry
I started with a recipe that worked: chicken pieces were dipped in buttermilk, then tossed in flour that had salt and black pepper on it. They were then fried in peanut oil at 325°F until they were fully cooked. A few problems immediately became clear. First off, timing: By the time my chicken was cooked through (thats 150°F in the breasts and 165°F in the legs), the outer crust was a dark brown, bordering on black in spots. Not only that, but it didnt have nearly as much crunch as I wanted. Finally, the meat underneath the crust wasnt completely desiccated, but I wouldnt exactly describe it as moist, not to mention its rather bland flavor. I decided to fix my chicken from the inside out.
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*For those of you squeamish about “undercooked” chicken or who insist that breast meat must be cooked to 165°F to be safe and tasty, please read this discussion on real world food safety, which is quite different from what the U. S. government would have you believe.
The problem is that with fried chicken, the crisp well-seasoned coating is merely a surface treatment. None of that flavor penetrates very deeply. Surely brining and/or marinating should help with that problem? Brining is the process by which a lean meat (most often chicken, turkey, or pork) is submerged in a saltwater solution. The saltwater will slowly break down important muscle proteins as the meat sits. This includes myosin, a protein that holds muscle fibers together like glue. As the myosin dissolves, three things take place:
- First, the meat’s ability to keep water in increases. You can think of meat as a bunch of long, thin toothpaste tubes that are twisted together. As you cook the meat, the toothpaste tubes get squished, which forces out the good juices. By slowing down the transfer of energy to the meat, breading will help lessen this effect to some extent, but the chicken will still be squeezed a lot no matter how well it is breaded. One of the main proteins that makes this squeezing action happen is myosin. By dissolving it, you stop a lot of water loss from happening.
- Second, brining changes the texture of the meat by letting proteins that have been dissolved connect with each other. This is the main idea behind making sausage: proteins that have been dissolved can stick together, giving the meat a nice, springy, tender texture. When you brine a chicken breast or pork chop, you’re basically giving it a very light cure. This is the same process that turns raw ham into soft prosciutto.
- Third, the brine slowly ages the meat below the surface as it works its way into it. A brine that you leave on the meat overnight will get a few millimeters deep into it, seasoning it before you even roll it in bread crumbs. Brines also make meat more juicy by making muscles better at keeping water in. It takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours to brine chicken breasts normally. In this case, though, a much, much longer brining time was needed to completely counteract the effects of high-temperature frying. This gave the meat a unique, juicy, and smooth texture.
A full six hours submerged in salt/sugar water produced the beauty below. Weighing the meat confirmed that an overnight-brined-then-fried bird loses about nine percent less moisture than an unbrined bird does and is significantly tastier.
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Ive experimented with tossing certain animal preparations with a mixture of baking powder and salt a day in advance in order to improve their crispness. The salt acts as a brine, while the baking powder raises the pH of the skin, causing it to brown more efficiently and the thin film of protein-rich liquid around it to form microbubbles that can add crispness. I tried this method on my fried chicken, but it ended up drying the skin out too much, making it tough to get the breading to remain attached down the line.
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Knowing that Id be soaking my chicken in buttermilk the next day anyway, I wondered if Id be able to kill two birds with one stone by replacing the water in the brine with buttermilk. Not only did the chicken come out just as moist as with water brine, it was actually significantly more tender as well, due to the tenderizing effects of buttermilk on food (soaking it for more than one night led to chicken that was so tender that it bordered on mush). Finally, hitting the buttermilk with spices helped build flavor right into the surface of the bird. I changed the mix a few times before I found the right mix of garlic powder, a little dried oregano, cayenne pepper and paprika (for their heat and peppery flavor), and a lot of freshly ground black pepper. The Colonel may use eleven secret herbs and spices in his chicken recipe, but five was quite enough for me (and both my wife and my doorman heartily concurred).
**Some folks shun garlic powder, saying that its nothing like real garlic. I agree: garlic powder is nothing like real garlic. But that doesnt mean it doesnt have its culinary uses. Its particularly effective in spice rubs and breadings, where fresh garlic would be difficult to incorporate, due to its texture.
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.
Chicken and Buttermilk Is a Match Made In Heaven Part #1
FAQ
How long should you let chicken sit in buttermilk?
Allow plenty of time to soak the chicken in buttermilk. At least 4-8 hours (or overnight) is ideal; however, in a pinch you can shorten this time to about 30 minutes.
Why should I soak chicken in buttermilk?
Why Brine Chicken in Buttermilk? Buttermilk tenderizes the chicken while keeping it moist. Brining chicken 24-hours in buttermilk ensures your chicken will be tender, juicy, and packed full of flavor. I mean, nobody likes dry flavorless chicken!.
What does buttermilk do to a chicken?
The buttermilk and salt work like a brine to make the meat more tender on multiple levels. The water in the buttermilk adds moisture, and the salt and acid in the buttermilk stop proteins from working, so the proteins can’t squeeze water out of the meat while the bird cooks.
Do you rinse meat after soaking in buttermilk?
Yes, it is generally recommended to rinse meat after soaking it in buttermilk. Some cooks on Reddit say that leaving buttermilk on can make the food taste too sour or tangy, especially if it wasn’t cooked at a high temperature or for a long time during the process.