The Secret To Juicy Fried Chicken Is Inside Your Liquor Cabinet

Frying chicken involves a lot of prep work and it's sometimes difficult to get the results you want. In particular, it's all too easy for it to come out dense and chewy instead of light and crispy. To fix that, there's a less common ingredient you can add to the batter: A splash of vodka.

You're not adding vodka for the flavor, and in fact, you want a spirit like vodka precisely because it doesn't have a strong flavor that might overpower the dish. Instead, vodka has some unique, slightly volatile properties which can help speed up and intensify the crisping and browning process on the crust of your fried chicken. The end result is crispier, lighter chicken with stronger flavors brought out by the vodka.

Generally, you want to reduce the amount of water and replace it with vodka instead. A good ratio is to add a couple of tablespoons of vodka for every cup of water or other liquids in your batter. This one more trick in your arsenal to upgrade your fried chicken, making it much less chewy. For dry rub marinades, adding an ounce of vodka should get you the same result.

How exactly does vodka help speed up the frying process? The answer involves the basics of how frying chicken works (although you can also add vodka to pie crusts, onion rings, and plenty more). When you're frying chicken in your skillet after soaking it in buttermilk, the water in the marinade or batter will evaporate, and once it does, the crisping and browning process begins in earnest. Fortunately, because vodka is 60 percent water, it evaporates much faster than water — the rapid dehydration makes the batter crisp more intensely, leaving large air bubbles which increase the surface area of the batter.

Vodka is also acidic enough that it can inhibit the formation of gluten (proteins formed from wheat products, in this case the flour), which normally appears more often in the presence of water in the batter. All of that gluten makes a dish more chewy, and without it you'll have a lighter crunch instead. On top of all of this, vodka's intense yet neutral flavor profile allows it to draw out flavors from other ingredients in the batter, including whatever combination of herbs and spices you prefer to add.

For your batter, it's fine to stick to a standard, 80 proof vodka without any extra flavorings. If you're tempted to buy super cheap vodka for cooking, consider buying the brand you normally like, because quality does make a difference, even with neutral flavors.

You could get similar crisping effects with bourbon or any other whiskey, which is also 60 percent water like vodka, but you'll end up with extra whiskey flavors which could cover up or mess with your spices. If that sounds fine, then crispy bourbon fried chicken is also a real recipe, and you might consider adding hot sauce into the marinade. Alternately, vodka is a perfect choice if you're making an ultra crispy style of fried chicken like karaage, which is Japanese twice-fried chicken that uses potato starch instead of a batter. Korean fried chicken is also known to be especially crispy and an ideal choice for using vodka in the batter — plus, it's known in South Korea as an anju, or a food meant to be paired with alcohol. This usually means a bottle of beer on the side, but cooking with vodka (which will evaporate anyway) certainly fits.