Thanks, Sohla: Spicy Fried Chicken
Like every food-obsessed internet person, I used to be in love with Bon Appetit’s Youtube channel. The channel combined good recipes and skilled on-air talent with creative editing, high production values and humor to make compulsively bingeable videos. The channel’s secret sauce was that it made Bon Appetit seem like a cool, fun workplace where everyone knew each other and helped each other out. The constant cameos and crossover appearances by different chefs in the Bon Appetit roster kept the videos fun and engaging, and made the on-air talent feel like a friend group you were a part of.
Of course, it’s 2020 and everything good is actually bad, and it turns out that Bon Appetit basically wasn’t paying its nonwhite contributors for their video appearances. Editor-in-chief Adam Rapaport also once appeared in terrible brownface at a Halloween party as an offensive Puerto Rican stereotype.
Many of the details about BA’s sculduggery came from chef Sohla El-Waylly’s Instagram, where she revealed how low her pay was compared to her white coworkers. Bon Appetit promised to do better, fired Rapaport, and tried to write new contracts to retain the workers they had been screwing. Ultimately BA failed to provide equitable pay to its nonwhite talent, causing fan favorites like Sohla, Priya Krishna, and Rick Sanchez to either leave the company entirely or to stop appearing in videos. The BA Youtube channel is now effectively dead, at least for now.
Sohla’s revelations were especially galling considering that she had established herself as probably the most talented, imaginative, and technically gifted chef in the BA test kitchen during her short tenure there. People have even made supercuts of her schooling all the other chefs at Bon Appetit. Fortunately, she has been able to spin out of the Bon Appetit trash fire gracefully, and now has her own show on Bingeing With Babish’s Youtube channel. She also demonstrated her perfect fried chicken recipe in a video for the New York Times. Inspired by the video, I did a spicy fried chicken inspired by her methods on a day when my girlfriend was craving hot chicken. It slapped.
Spicy Fried Chicken With Chili Oil
4 skin on bone in chicken thighs
2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup kimchi juice or the liquid from fermented mustard greens
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
Tsp cayenne pepper
Tsp msg
Tsp cumin
Tsp coriander
Tsp black pepper
Tbsp Louisiana-style hot sauce like Crystal
2 tsp Lawry’s or other seasoned salt
Tsp garlic powder
Tbsp Chinese chili oil
Trim any excess fat and skin off your chicken thighs, and then soak them in a mixture of buttermilk and kimchi juice/mustard green liquid. Fermented mustard greens can be bought easily at asian grocers, or you can make your own. I actually soaked my chicken in straight mustard green liquid because I had a ton leftover from multiple batches of fermented greens. You could also use the liquid from spicy pickles. The main goal is to have a soaking liquid that is pickly, salty, and a little spicy.
You should soak the chicken for at least an hour or two, or preferably overnight. Mix all the dried spices together, and beat about half of this spice blend together with the hot sauce and eggs, thinning with a little water. Mix together your flour and cornstarch in a separate bowl.
Take the chicken out of its brine and dump it into the starch mixture, tossing to coat. Transfer from the starch bowl to the egg mixture, making sure every bit of the chicken is coated with egg, then dunk it back into the starch mixture. Press the flour into your chicken pieces forcefully, making sure every inch is thickly coated. You want to be kind of sloppy with this process, freely contaminating your flour mixture with little drops of egg and brine, because the liquid combined with the flour/starch is what creates the crispy craggy bits on the outside of truly excellent fried chicken.
At this point, you would ideally let the chicken sit at room temp on a sheet pan for a while to let the coating set, but this is not strictly necessary. Heat about an inch of oil in some kind of wide, flat bottomed pan over medium heat. Cast iron skillets are perfect for this, but if you don’t have one a high-walled stainless steel saute pan, a dutch oven, or even a pasta pot would all make adequate substitutes. Any kind of neutral oil with a high smoke point would work, but I think grapeseed oil, peanut oil, or lard are the best options. To me, canola oil and vegetable oil have off flavors that become quite noticeable when used in the quantities necessary for deep frying.
You’re shooting for around 350 degrees with your oil, but there’s no real need to bust out a thermometer. Just drop a little chunk of your breading mixture in, and if it sizzles vigorously, you’re good to go. Carefully lay in your chicken pieces one at a time, and immediately crank the heat under your skillet so the oil temperature can recover. If you don’t do this, the cool oil will all immediately rush into your chicken, leaving you with a greasy, sad bird. Keep the heat high until the oil is singing and sizzling at a pretty good pace, and then reduce back to medium. Cook the chicken for about half an hour to 40 minutes, flipping every 5 to 10 minutes to ensure even cooking. The chicken should be cooked all the way through when the coating is deeply golden brown all the way around, with some dark chocolate brown in the spots where it has made contact with the bottom of the skillet. If you’re unsure, pierce the biggest piece with a paring knife to see if the juices run clear.
I didn’t use quite enough oil, so there was a little ring of non-crispy chicken around the edges of my pieces
Remove your chicken from the oil with tongs and drain on a rack or a crumpled up piece of tinfoil. Immediately sprinkle it with salt and drizzle with chili oil to taste, then dust with your reserved spice mixture. I like to follow Sohla’s lead and serve mine with honey. Kristen eats hers with a mixture of Crystal hot sauce and ranch, which is also incredibly delicious. Wait a couple minutes before you bite in unless you want to remove all your tastebuds with scalding chicken juice.
The tinfoil elevates the pieces and keeps the bottom from becoming soggy
