Binging with Babish: KFC from Stranger Things

"I forgot the time and before you know it..." "...OMG, it's 5 o'clock." "Alright." "Good." "It's great!" "I love KFC." "Ah, but-" "-Excuse me, I'll be right back." *Gratuitous crunch* "It's finger-lickin' good." *Growl of Approval* BABISH: Hey guys, welcome back to "Binging with Babish" where, this week, I'm so excited to announce that the official "Binging with Babish Cookbook": The Show's First 100 Recipes is available. to reserve now. Head over to where, if you pre-order before the October 22 release date, you'll get access to special content. More than later, because it seems like I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 herbs and spices in front of me.

So we must try to attack the colonel. Although I will maintain that there must be a twelfth herb and/or spice... ...that is MSG because it is listed in its ingredients list. Which is not a criticism against KFC; Monosodium glutamate is delicious. (And totally safe) So, with that in mind, let's build our chicken breading. We start with: 2/3 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon thyme 1/2 teaspoon basil 1/3 teaspoon oregano 1 teaspoon celery salt 1 teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon dry mustard 4 teaspoons paprika 2 teaspoons garlic salt 1 teaspoon ground ginger and 3 teaspoons white pepper and of course Sander's little secret: 3/4 teaspoon MSG. Whisk in small amounts of 2 cups all-purpose flour.

Next, we have to address the marinade... ...or at least what KFC calls "the marinade": an undisclosed mixture of water, salt, and lots of MSG, which is brought to a boil. and in which the chicken is submerged before breading it. Speaking of which, here's the man of the hour: the...chicken. An 8-piece bucket is essentially a whole shredded chicken. So, that's exactly what we're going to do. I've covered this in previous episodes. If you want to see how to shred a chicken, click the link in the top right corner... Now, once you're done, you should have 8 pieces plus a tenderloin and wings, which we're going to hang from.

For later. KFC fries its chicken in a proprietary blend of oils. So, I'll use my two favorites: canola and peanuts. And now it's time to start dipping our chicken in various substances. First, in the "marinade" for 7 seconds. Take it out, shake it 7 times, bring it close to the breading, pour it in without caution or forethought, and make sure that each piece is uniformly and deeply coated by the dredge. At this point, KFC shakes the chicken 7 times to remove excess flour. But I'll give it a little shake and drop it into 375 degree Fahrenheit oil, where we'll let it fry relatively undisturbed. but flip them after about 6 minutes and fry them for a total of about 10 minutes until the outside is very golden brown and crispy.

So, we now have our first drumsticks. Let's see how it compares to a real KFC. (KFC is on the left) Inspecting their ingredient list once again, I saw that they used dried powdered egg whites, which gives them a rougher, better-developed crust, but the flavors are pretty spot on. So, we're going to top it off with an egg wash and buttermilk. This time, straight from the "marinade," to the flour dredging, then to the buttermilk and egg mixture, and back to the flour dredging, making something that's more like extra crispy chicken than the original recipe. So, I may have missed the mark, but I'm pretty happy with the look of this crust.

But let's see how it tastes... and... it tastes amazing. For a super quick and easy fried chicken, this isn't a bad way to make it, but it's missing a lot of the flavors I look for in my fried chicken, in particular: my way of salt and buttermilk. Plus, these fried chicken cubes look absolutely ridiculous without sides. So, let's make some cookies like I imagine KFC makes them, which is: frozen. The ingredient list in these Pillsbury Grands!™ is almost identical to KFC's. Likewise, I'm sure mashed potato powder and gravy powder will work fine. But we're going to enhance our sauce the same way the Colonel does: by adding what's called "crunch" or, as I call it, "Brown, sloppy gold." The residue that collects at the bottom of the pot after frying adds a tremendous depth of flavor to the sauce, and I just...

I just can't recommend it enough. So now we have our fried chicken, our reconstituted potatoes, our upgraded sauce, and our biscuits out of the oven. Finally, we have a facsimile of what was consumed on screen. Let's put our chicken center stage and if you ask me, it looks good and tastes good. I really enjoy KFC, I think it's a masterclass in fast food. But, obviously, everything here has room for improvement. Biscuits made with butter, mashed potatoes made with...mashed potatoes, and chicken, which could greatly benefit from an overnight bath in buttermilk. So, excuse my casual attire while I tear another chicken into 8 pieces, because it's late at night and I'm preparing them for their bedtime brine.

In a large food-safe bucket 16 ounces of buttermilk are placed along with the 12 herbs and spices mentioned above, along with an extra tablespoon of kosher salt, whisked in small amounts and followed shortly by our chicken pieces, which really we want to press there. -give them a good mix-- and make sure they are evenly coated with the buttermilk brine. This type then goes into the refrigerator for at least 6 hours and up to 24. It is taken out once or twice during the marinating time to give it a good lift. Then, while the chicken is marinating, we will prepare an optional broth.

In a large saucepan, I deeply brown our chicken wings and backbone pieces in a little vegetable oil over high heat, adding a few

things

like: a whole onion cut in half, a handful of carrots, a handful of celery, a bunch of fresh thyme and a head of garlic cut in half. Once the chicken is a nice brown color, we'll deglaze the pot with 8 cups of cold water, bring everything to a simmer, lower the heat to a simmer, and keep it there for about 4 hours until we have a Deeply. Seasoned. Golden. Chicken broth, which will be perfect for making sauce.

In a smaller saucepan, we melt: 6 tablespoons butter until foaming, add 1/3 cup all-purpose flour, whisk and cook for an additional minute before slowly pouring in our chicken broth; whisking constantly to prevent lumps from forming and adding about 3 cups along with a good splash of soy sauce for flavor and color. Then we'll bring it to a simmer for 3-4 minutes until it becomes nice and thick and... sauce-like. As always, taste to season, then we will cover it and set it aside, being careful not to touch the HOT, HOT handles, because we have other

things

to do, among which is the mashed potatoes. 4 pounds of Russetts are peeled, cut into 1-inch cubes, and placed in a pot of cold water.

So, we'll take this pot to the stove, where, as you might have guessed, we'll bring the whole thing to a boil. Once it boils, cook for 12-16 minutes until the potatoes are cooked through. Then we drain, reserve the empty pot, rinse the potatoes with hot tap water and then start making rice, that is: we place some pieces of potato in a food mill and press, creating this beautiful potato spaghetti effect. . Then, to our potato spaghetti, we added: 1 stick of room temperature unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch pieces and 2 cups of warm milk, and a little kosher salt and I go with white pepper to maintain the color. potatoes.

We're using a lot of milk here, but KFC's mashed potatoes are quite thin, so I want to recreate that consistency. As always, taste the seasoning and set aside, because we move on to my favorite part of the day: the shortbread cookies. Thanks to a recipe courtesy of "America's Test Kitchen", we weighed: 13 1/2 oz. all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons sugar 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt. This is beaten very little until it is homogeneous. And then, we begin the slightly labor-intensive but worthwhile act of grating 2 sticks of frozen butter using the slightly larger holes of a cheese grater.

Unlike chopping butter in...say...a food processor, this produces nice, thin, long strands of butter that will be perfect for layering. We'll simply add the butter to the flour mixture, give it a good mix, making sure all the pieces are coated, carefully measure out 1 1/4 cups of buttermilk, add it to the mixture and give it a good stir. Nothing too crazy. It will not form a ball; We just want to hydrate as much flour as possible before pouring it onto a generously floured countertop, where we are going to continue trying to bring it together until it forms a kind of rectangle that, with the help of a generously floured rolling pin, we are going to implement as best we can.

Every instinct will tell you that this dough is too dry, but DO NOT ADD LIQUID OF ANY KIND! Simply roll it out to a 16-by-9-inch rectangle and fold it into thirds like a letter, preferably with a bench scraper, like this one, which helps a lot in the shaping process: Roll it out, once again, into a 16-by-9-inch rectangle by 9 rectangle and fold into thirds, repeating the process 5 times, effectively making something more like a quick puff pastry than a cookie dough. But, as you can imagine, all those little pieces of butter are thinning, flattening and layering, and as you can see, our dough is starting to become more and more cohesive.

Once we have completed 5 rolls, fluvs and turns, we place the dough on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes to harden. Once it is completely cool, we place it on a floured work surface, we roll it out until we obtain a square shape of approximately 9 by 9 (?), and then, using a very sharp knife that we have sprinkled with flour, we are going to start to trim the edges. Make sure you make nice, clean, downward cuts: no wiggling, no sawing motions, no back and forth, all of which will inhibit the rise of the cookies.

And then once we've trimmed the edges, we cut cleanly into 9 square cookies. Then, place back on the parchment paper-lined baking sheet and spread with butter. By now you're probably wondering, "What's wrong with square cookies?" Well, cutting them into squares reduces the crop, and the crop never increases the same when you roll it out again. Anyway, these guys will pop them in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 to 25 minutes until they're gorgeous. You have to let them cool on a rack for about 10 minutes before consuming them, but you're going to have a hard time waiting, because look at those layers.

These make the Pillsbury Grands!™ look like a Pillsbury... Casio keyboard.... As in Grand Piano uh... versus... ANYWAY! Finally, we're going back to the chicken and we're making a dredge in exactly the same way we did the first batch, because I liked the way it looked, I liked the way it tasted, and I liked the way it behaved. But, to help make it crispier, we added about 1/2 cup of cornstarch, whisked a little, and took the chicken out of the refrigerator, where it's lurking. J. Kenji López-Alt has a great trick where he adds a few tablespoons of marinade to the dredge, mixing it with his fingers (or a fork), creating little pieces of breading that will stick to the chicken and make it.

Even. More. Crispier. Likewise, Sean Brock has a trick where he breads all of his chicken at once. That's why I'm using a nice wide casserole dish. Basically, this just helps to hydrate the dredge even more, so the final product wrinkles and creaks more. Once everyone is on their floured bed, we'll let them get to know each other for about 10 minutes. Then we'll get back in front of the camera and notice some silliness on our apron. (That's not good.) Then we'll head back in front of the camera and retrieve our chicken, which is finally ready to fry.

In the same mixture of oils goes (this time at 400 degrees Fahrenheit) fry for 6-9 minutes until golden and crispy, place on a rack and keep in the low oven until all the chicken has finished cooking. fry. : The dark meat registers at 175 and the white meat registers at 165. Then, once everyone is nice and fried, we scoop out the Brown, Sloppy Gold™ from the bottom of the pot and add it to our sauce. And now it's time to present the PERFECT meal for both the 4th of July and the return of "Stranger Things": buttermilk fried chicken, creamy mashed potatoes, homemade gravy, and flaky buttermilk biscuits.

I also like to give the chicken a final pinch of kosher salt before preparing a dish. Let me go ahead and answer your burning question and tell you that I'm a thigh guy, but I would gladly eat any piece of chicken at this table. It's juicy. It's crispy. It's tasty. It's the best fried chicken I've ever made and I'll be back for seconds. BABISH: Hello friends, as I mentioned earlier, my new cookbook: "Binging with Babish", the companion cookbook, is now available.available for pre-order. Launching October 22, it features the first 100 recipes from my show, beautiful photography, fun stories, and glimpses into my weird, wild world of food recreation.

And, if you pre-order the book, you'll have access to special blooper photos, sneak peeks, and an exclusive recipe. Head over to... ...to reserve your copy today.