Ginger and Onion and Garlic Fried Chicken

Since I read Thomas Keller’s Buttermilk Fried Chicken Recipe at epicurious, I have been longing to make some fried chicken. To make Keller’s Buttermilk chicken, the bird is brined for 12 hours in a herb-lemon brine, which seasons the meat and helps it stay juicy. So the trick in making a perfect fried chicken is to marinate it for long enough in order for the chicken to acquire all the flavours of the marinate.

I generally marinate defrosted chicken for 6-8 hrs before frying. I use a fairly uncomplicated marinate and shallow fry the chicken. This is how I do it.

Meal for: No matter how may fried pieces I make, it is never enough

Number of pieces: 20 small ones

Ingredients:

2 chicken breast halves which is sliced into bite-size strips or cubes

3 tablespoons of cornstarch/ corn flour

1 tablespoon of refined flour

1 egg (actually we need half of an egg which has been beaten

½ table spoon black pepper powder

For the marinate:

Make a paste of 10 cloves of garlic

1 inch long ginger

2 small onions

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt to taste

White oil to fry (15 tablespoons)

Method:

Wash the chicken breasts thoroughly and squeeze of the extra water. Flatten out the chicken breasts and cut into bite size pieces. Make a paste in the grinder with the ingredients for marinate and cover the chicken pieces with it along with salt and pepper. Leave aside for 6-8 hours.

Just before frying, beat an egg and add half of it to the marinated chicken. Now add the corn flour and the refined flour. Mix thoroughly with hand so that all the chicken pieces are more or less well coated.

Next, heat oil in a shallow fry pan till it is smoking hot. Lower the flame of the burner and put in the chicken pieces and let it cook for 3-4 minutes on slow heat before turning over and repeating the same. Serve hot your ginger onion garlic fried chicken as a snack.  

I friend with whom I was sharing this recipe asked me "so what happened to the half of the beaten egg which we did not need"? Well, I generally chop one onion and add it to the beaten egg, add salt to taste and one table spoon of corn flour and another table spoon of refined flour, mix with my hand and put small blobs into the oil that is left after frying the chicken. These also make for great snack item with onions remaining half cooked and crunchy inside with the egg batter nicely coating it.

What do I call them? Well, lets just say these are egg and onion fritters.