Ree Drummond's Trick For Extra Crispy Fried Chicken Is This Lumpy Step

If you are looking for some easy, home-spun tips for making crispy fried chicken, your first stop should be to look to Ree Drummond. The Pioneer Woman turned a life of living on a ranch and raising four kids into a hit blog and then TV show that celebrates the best ways to make comfort food classics at home. And one of the best things you can learn from Drummond is that even food that seems more suited to a restaurant, like fried chicken, is within reach for any home cook. All it takes is a little bit of knowledge about the secrets that cooks use to make fried chicken great, and one of the simplest ones, which Drummond uses in the fried chicken recipe she shared with Food Network, is adding some milk to her chicken dredge.

It's such a small step that doesn't require any extra ingredients, but you'll see the benefits before your chicken even starts browning in the hot oil. Adding a few tablespoons or a quarter cup of milk (or buttermilk) to the flour before you dredge your chicken will create little clumps of flour that adhere to the outside. Those extra clumps become more nooks and crannies of delicious fried batter that add an extra layer of crispy crunch to any fried chicken. All you need to do when you add the milk, or whichever liquid you used as a marinade, is use a fork to mix it in until you see the clumps forming. Then follow your fried chicken recipe as normal.

If you want to go just a little farther for the glory of perfectly crispy fried chicken, there are a few more simple additions to try. The first is cornstarch, which should be added to the flour before being tossed with the chicken. A bit of cornstarch, about a tablespoon for each cup-and-a-half of flour, will make the end result more crispy by inhibiting gluten development. Cornstarch is also good at absorbing excess oil and moisture, which also gives the rest of the coating more crunch.

For the liquid part of the dredge, try adding two egg whites and/or two tablespoons of vodka. Egg whites combine with the liquid to help make it more gluey, which will in turn help more of the flour adhere to the chicken, even as it fries. This is especially effective for helping those bigger, heavier clumps of flour you are making by mixing in the milk stay stuck to the outside. Vodka also inhibits gluten formation, and it evaporates more quickly than other liquids. This more intense evaporation drives off more moisture and creates air bubbles in your crust, both of which will mean a crisper piece of chicken in the end. Every little trick like this adds to the crunch factor, and when you combine them all with Drummond's tip, you'll be in for chicken that gets, and stays, extra crispy.