THE Best Crunchy Chicken

Tonight was Crunchy chicken and rice night, this is made once a week in my home and that one spicy neuro week … thrice.

Everyone loves it and I have some annoyingly picky eaters.

I found the original recipe from Takes Two Eggs, while trying to find a bearable “Chinese food” that we could make at home. (Check out that page for some really great recipes)

We have recently relocated to a small town in South Dakota, LONG STORY, so it’s slim pickins for a lot of our regular favorite food.

My kingdom for some real sushi….

This recipe does require double frying the chicken, which is pretty time consuming. I’m so lazy when it comes to cooking and I absolutely think it’s worth it, if you have littles, they may not appreciate the effort, time and mess involved so maybe just make the crunchy goodness for you, Momma.

I’m in this place of re-learning to cook (ALSO a long story), so I’m not an expert cook but this recipe wasn’t complicated at all. But with any recipe if I find short cuts that make it easier, I’m all about it.

CRUNCHY CHICKEN (Honey Sesame Chicken)

Ingredients

-3 lb chicken breast or thighs cut into 1 inch pieces

Chicken Marinade – I don’t actually measure, just eyeball it in a bowl over the cubed chicken add enough water to cover all the chicken.

• White Pepper
• Chicken Bouillon Powder
• Water

– Chicken Batter – The original recipe has a homemade recipe…this girl doesn’t have time for that.

• Louisiana Seasoned Beer Batter

-12 oz Beer, or 8 oz water or club soda (if you only use 8oz of fluid this will be SUPER fluffy, I suggest adding a little more fluid for a better fry consistency.

Sauce (Mix ahead and set aside)

•  6 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 4 tablespoon mirin
• 4 tablespoon ketchup
• 1/2 cup honey
• 6 tablespoon brown sugar
• 6 tablespoon water

This goes in the Wok BEFORE the sauce, not mixed in…I didn’t catch that in the original and mixed it all together.

• 8 cloves garlic (BUY THE PREMINCED)
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil

Cornstarch slurry (Mix ahead and set aside)

• 4 teaspoon corn starch
• 6 tablespoon water

– Peanut oil

HELFUL – Candy/oil thermometer, meat thermometer, tongs, large skimmer

>>>I will add ALL the ORIGINAL CREATORS instructions here, and it’s also above where I listed the original creator. I know some people I hate looking for them, But I’m not going to add them word for word since I kept most of the how I made this the same. I’ve continued below with things I found helpful while I was making this, but not a step-by-step process.

You’ll need enough oil to fill a wok/fryer/pan and cook several batches of chicken twice. I use a cast iron Dutch oven, its fill a little more than half which takes 1/3 of a big container of oil. I could honestly use less but my thermometer won’t reach down into the pot when I do that so, pick your battles I suppose.

ALSO, I recommend using a deep fat fryer if you have one, the heat needs to be consistent. Especially during the second fry. If not, DO NOT go buy a deep fat fryer…It sounds like a good idea but you’ll be deep frying pickle stuffed ding dongs by the end of the first evening. Just because you can, and no one needs that kind of power.

The boyfriend is a feral cook and thinks he can eyeball everything…including chicken temperatures. That is anarchy my friends, and the path to salmonella. Get yourself an oil/candy thermometer and watch your heat in a good deep pan, my vote is for cast iron but I’ve also used a Wok.

The Biggest difference between the original recipe, and how I cook it, is I don’t make the homemade batter. I have a beer batter that I really love, it tastes great and I’m able to make less of a mess in less time if I use a premade batter. You can mix it with club soda, or water, but we use a Blue Moon.

I also use Chicken breast, instead of the thighs because it’s less calories and fat.

The chicken needs to be cut up into doable pieces, if it’s too small then it takes forever and can cook too much with the double fry. And if you make them too big, then it takes a while to cook.

We cut up and used all but two of the chicken breast from this pack, the rest was frozen for later use. It just makes too much and takes a while to do the whole pack. Tonight, there were 4 of us (2 who are basically bottomless pits) who ate the Crunchy chicken, and that left us with about two servings of cooked chicken.

I’m a princess and don’t like cutting up the chicken, The Boyfriend steps in.

Once I get my heat up I start cooking the chicken in batches of about 5 or 6 pieces at a time, 3 minutes at 365 degrees. The chicken goes on a wire rack, and I wait until the heat goes back up in between batches before I put the next batch in.

I wait until ALL the chicken gets a first fry before I start the second batch, I’m not worried about checking temp on the chicken at this point.

The heat HAS to be at 375 degrees for the second fry, the chicken stays in for 2 minutes this time. I again wait for the heat to get back up to the correct temp, before I add another batch. once my timer is close, I will get one piece out and use a meat thermometer to make sure the chicken is up to 165.

This is after the second fry, I start getting plates made after each batch gets done because this can take a bit of time.

The kids will actually just eat this with honey or other dipping sauce, so if Chinese food isn’t your thing, it still makes great chicken chunks.

After everything’s done I make the Honey Sesame sauce, its incredibly easy.

I used a hot wok and added my sesame oil and minced garlic first, THEN add the already mixed sauce ingredients until it’s bubbling a bit (2 minutes). Add the slurry, lower the heat and stir until it’s the desired thickness. Toss the chicken in the sauce and serve over rice.

If you have any questions, or things you tried and want to share let me know!

This is obviously my first time writing out my undiagnosed, adhd cooking process so be patient as I find my groove…Or I mean buckle up because this just could be my groove. 🤣

~ Brookie