Welcome back to Like a Chef; lifting the lid on restaurant cooking for you at home.
We love fried chicken so much we opened a whole restaurant dedicated to serving it. Naturally, we’ve picked up a technique or two about how to get the best results. Today, we’re showing you how to make the most unreal chicken tenders, at home.
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Jack & Will
Chicken tenders are easily the ultimate finger food. But there’s nothing worse than a disappointingly soft crust or a mouthful of dry chicken. A few simple changes will help you ace the perfect chicken tender:
Use thighs, not tenderloin. More fat = no dryness. Tenderloins also tend to be too smooth for the dredge to hold onto.
Marinate your chicken. We like to use sriracha in the marinade, as the acidity helps tenderise the meat and adds flavour.
Use buttermilk in your wet dredge. An extra layer of fat around the lean chicken adds unctuousness and boosts even cooking.
Once you’ve followed these steps, you won’t look back. These are the ultimate, bar-raising chicken tenders. Recipe below.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
12 Chicken Thighs
Marinade
240g Sriracha
120g water
14g fine salt
Dry dredge
Wet dredge
100g sparkling water
100g buttermilk
25g cornflour
Dry dredge
400g plain flour
160g potato starch
17g baking powder
12g Fine Sea Salt
20g MSG
20g White pepper
5g Black pepper
5g Onion powder
5g garlic powder
5g Cayenne pepper
Sriracha Honey
100g Honey
15g Fallow sriracha
Pinch of salt
Pinch of black pepper
Method:
Unroll each thigh, slice in half lengthways and score a few times on each side
In a mixing bowl, combine the Sriracha, water and salt.
Submerge the chicken thighs in the marinade, cover and refrigerate over night
Make a buttermilk and corn flour slurry but whisking the buttermilk and cornflour together
In a separate bowl, mix all the dry dredge ingredients together
Remove from the marinade, allowing the excess to drip off for a few seconds
Transfer the marinated tenders to the dry dredge, turning 60 times to fully coat!
Dip each piece into the wet dredge before returning to the dry dredge and turning 60 time again
Once all the tenders have been coated in the dry dredge, fry in pan of neutral oil heated to 180°C
Fry until golden brown and the internal temperature reaches 68°C before carefully removing from the oil, seasoning and leaving to drain
To make the sriracha honey, warm the honey in a saucepan and whisk in the sriracha. Season and serve with the tenders
Thanks for reading!
Jack & Will
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Interesting ingredients, I want to try this. I never thought of using thighs but they are definitely less dry so it’s worth a try.
the recipe ingredients mention sparkling water, but I didn't see it used in the video and it's not mentioned in the directions. was this an artifact or should I include it?