When making fried chicken, buy a whole chicken weighing 2 to 3 pounds and break it down yourself. This ensures a mix of dark and white meat at a reasonable cost.

Dark meat lovers can go for legs or thighs, and white meat fans can enjoy breasts or tenders. This selection provides a variety without oversized pieces prolonging cooking time.

Tenderizing chicken, especially the breasts, is an easy yet crucial process that helps the meat cook faster and more evenly while ensuring juicy tenderness.

To tenderize your chicken, seal it in a plastic bag and use a flat, heavy object to pound the meat until it’s an even thickness and slightly thinner than what you started with.

A brine is a mixture of water, vinegar, salt, and aromatics. Soaking chicken in brine before dredging and frying seasons the meat from the inside out and tenderizes it.

There are innumerable varieties of fried chicken brines. Be it a simple pickle juice or a blend of dill pickle liquid and buttermilk, brine yields flavorful, juicy fried chicken.

Cold chicken thrown in hot oil can end up overcooked on the edges but raw in the center. The breading can turn out overly crunchy, burnt, or acrid-tasting.

However, bringing your chicken to room temperature for at least 30 minutes (and no more than an hour) helps it cook more evenly and ensures the breading crisps without overcooking.

Incorporating mustard into your fried chicken recipe lifts and cuts through the fattiness and boosts the flavors of the other ingredients without overpowering the dish.

You can either add pinches of mustard powder to the seasoned flour dredge or baste the raw, dried, and pre-buttermilk brined chicken with classic yellow mustard before dredging.