A whole cut up chicken, soaked in a seasoned buttermilk and mustard marinade, then dredged in a seasoned flour, deep fried and finished in the oven. Pictured here with roasted potatoes and black-eyed peas.

Buttermilk Mustard Fried Chicken

Like many Southerners, I love fried chicken, especially when it's prepared well. Although pretty rewarding in the end, it is a little messy frying it at home though and frankly takes practice,  meaning you need to keep making it often to perfect the processes!

You know. Like Grandma did.

For those reasons, lots of folks satisfy those occasional fried chicken cravings with take out these days and while really great fried chicken can be found at sit down restaurants, you can also find it at locally owned gas station counters, at regional grocery store delis like Winn Dixie and Rouses in my neighborhood, at local sit down or take out buffets like Hartz, Cajun's and Broome's and fried chicken places like Popeye's and KFC.

The one problem? Have you seen the prices?

The cost of a family meal with biscuits and sides has skyrocketed over the past few years, so much that I refer to it as $40 chicken! Just a few years ago those same dinners were less than $20 bucks.

We just might be indulging those fried chicken cravings a bit more at home these days, ya think?

Just a quick reminder.... if you aren't interested in the chit chat, info, photos, tips and such on a blog, as always, you'll find the complete recipe text with measurements and instructions, as well as a printable document, a little bit further down the page. Just swipe or scroll down to the bottom of the post!

Outside of slightly easier methods like chicken fried chicken, picnic style fried chicken and oven fried chicken, there are essentially two methods for deep fried chicken in the south.

Very often a grocery store chicken starts with a salt water brine for classic southern-style fried chicken. A wet dredge follows, often milk and eggs and sometimes a dash or three of hot sauce, and finally a dry dredge of flour with basic seasonings before deep frying. The other starts with an overnight buttermilk marinade, resulting in a thicker, more substantial crusting.

This recipe starts with a buttermilk marinade, the use of which for fried chicken is pretty common in the South, but maybe less known is the use of mustard.

The buttermilk tenderizes the chicken and the mustard provides a tangy flavor boost. I love using a good prepared yellow, Creole or a combination of the two mustards with Mustard Fried Fish and mustard coated fish is pretty common down here also. I've used mustard on my baked Deviled Pork Chops for a delicious flavor boost as well.

Buttermilk can make for a rather thick dredge coating because the flour really clings to the chicken. It's done its job, so you can remedy that by shaking off most of buttermilk, or just using your fingers to push a lot of it off. 

I think one of the other bigger challenges with frying chicken at home, is ensuring that it is thoroughly cooked through, without burning it.

While I do highly recommend always using an instant read thermometer (#ad) with any meat and especially with chicken, to check internal temperature either way, to overcome that challenge, we're going to flash fry the chicken, so that it is crusty and nicely browned, and then finish it on a rack in the oven. 

Be sure to tap here to click over to my classic fried chicken recipe for some great tips!

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Here's how to make my Buttermilk Mustard Fried Chicken.

Instead of the standard prepared mustard or even a spicy Creole mustard, I had a tin of Colman's mustard powder (#ad) in the spice cabinet, so I'm using that instead! Colman's is a blend of white and brown mustard seeds ground into a fine powder and provides a flavorful, spicy kick to recipes. I'm using a full tablespoon in my marinade and 2 teaspoons in my dredge.

For the marinade, I'm using buttermilk, spicy dry mustard, kosher salt, freshly cracked black pepper and a couple good shakes of hot sauce. Whisk all that together.

Dredge the chicken pieces in the buttermilk, cover and refrigerate several hours or overnight.

Now... with this method, we are flash frying the chicken and then transferring it to the oven to finish, so when you're ready to fry, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Fill a large cast iron chicken fryer or 12-inch skillet halfway with cooking oil and heat over medium-high to 375 degrees F.

Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, cornstarch and all of the dredge seasonings.

Pull chicken one piece at a time and since if the buttermilk coating is too thick it can make for a extra thick flour coating, shake off as much excess buttermilk from the chicken as possible. .

Toss the chicken in the seasoned flour one piece at a time.

Set each piece on a rack while the oil heats. 

Line a sheet pan with aluminum foil and place an oven safe rack on top. Fry chicken in batches until golden brown on both sides and transfer to rack to rest.

When all chicken has been flash-fried, place pan into the preheated oven and bake at 400 degrees for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F on an instant read thermometer (#ad). Total time will depend on the size of your pieces.

Today I went with sides of roasted potatoes and a serving of black-eyed peas.

For more of my favorite fried chicken recipes, check out the collection on my Pinterest page!

Unable to view the printable above on your device? Tap/click here.

Adapted from Alex's Day Off, Food Network

Posted by DeepSouthDish.com on May 11, 2024

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