I Use This Surprising Ingredient for an Egg-Free Fried Chicken Crust
The only bad fried chicken is soggy fried chicken. (And even then, honestly, a quick air fry’ll fix it right up.) However, there are indisputably great ways to get a crackling crust, and those should always be considered. For example, the karaage method or the copycat fast food method. There is another fried chicken trick that I’ve recently become aware of, and unlike the other two I mentioned, this one has no extra steps. There’s no three-part batter, and it doesn’t require a dip in a bowl of (still pricey) eggs. It’s one step with a simple flour swap, and it changes everything.
Self-rising flour is key
I’ve always used regular all-purpose flour to fry, or potato flour for its superior crisping qualities, but self-rising flour was a complete surprise. This flour, ever-present on my grocery store’s shelves, never seemed to be much use to me. For those who also don’t use it much, self-rising flour consists of a reliable ratio of all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. So if you wanted to make a quick pancake recipe, you could use a scoop of this stuff and skip adding those other two ingredients to your recipe.
I know that folks in the UK use it often, but I’ve always shied away from not being able to control the leavening agent and salt in my baking. But while reading the recipes in Still We Rise, a fantastic cookbook with biscuit recipes and recipes for other things you’d enjoy with a biscuit nearby, I came across the Glori-Fried Chicken Biscuit Sandwich. You guessed it: The recipe uses self-rising flour.
An easy, light, and crispy coating
Following the recipe, there is a section of notes called The Gospel of Fried Chicken, and Council (the author) briefly describes why self-rising flour works. The included salt boosts the flavor—no surprises there—but the baking powder plays a large role in giving a thin, shattering crust to the fried chicken. There’s no need for multiple dredges through flour or egg washes to make the crust as brilliant as it is.
As a leavening agent, baking powder has the duty to lift up and aerate our cakes and muffins, but it does this even in that thin layer coating your chicken. When hydrated and heated up, the baking powder reacts and produces carbon dioxide. This looks like tiny little bubbles in cakes, but on chicken it produces a delicate, rippling crust.
How to use self-rising flour for fried chicken
1. Brine
Whenever I fry chicken, I prefer to do a buttermilk brine if time affords it. Yogurt will work too, and that’s usually what I use. Even one hour can make a difference in how juicy and tender the chicken will be. I brined some skin-on chicken drumsticks in yogurt with a pinch of salt for about an hour. Then I prepared my flour dredge.
2. Coat the chicken
I mixed about three-quarters of a cup of self-rising flour with a half-teaspoon of salt (a little extra is necessary for fried chicken), a teaspoon of cornstarch (which provides extra starch for crunch), and a sprinkle of garlic and onion powder.
Then comes the easy part: coating the chicken. I put one drumstick at a time into the flour and coated it completely. Just one time. Then let them dry on a wire rack while I heated the oil.
3. Fry the chicken
I heated up about an inch of cooking oil in a dutch oven until it reached 350°F and fried until they were deeply browned on all sides and the internal temperature reached 160°F (carryover cooking—that is, when food continues to cook off the heat for several minutes—takes care of the remaining five degrees to get it to 165°F).
With truly the least effort I’ve ever put into fried chicken, I made a batch of the best drumsticks I’ve had in a long time. And with picnics and backyard parties coming up, you deserve this ease too.
Although I haven’t tried this self-rising flour coating on other fried morsels, like chicken tenders, eggplant, tofu, or zucchini planks, I trust that it would work just as well. Actually, I think I have a pack of tofu in the fridge right now. I know what I must do.
If you want more egg-free alternatives while prices are still high, I've tested other ideas, including: