KFC Popcorn Chicken

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Most people make popcorn chicken by taking a fried chicken recipe and cutting the chicken smaller. It comes out too salty and too heavily breaded, and the reason is geometry rather than cooking.

A 2 cm cube has roughly three times the surface area per gram that a chicken thigh does. Same dredge, same seasoning, three times as much of it per mouthful. The seasoning has to come down or every piece tastes like a spice cabinet.

The two things that change at this size

Seasoning concentration goes down. A dredge calibrated for large pieces will be overwhelming on small ones. Roughly two-thirds of the salt you would use otherwise.

Cooking time goes way down. These are done in three to four minutes. Anything longer and the outside is right while the inside has gone from cooked to dry — there is very little thermal mass to buffer you.

Thigh, not breast

Breast at this size has no margin. It goes from raw to chalky in about forty seconds of cooking time and there is no way to catch it.

Thigh meat has enough fat and connective tissue that it stays tender even if you overshoot, and it holds up to being reheated. This is the single biggest quality decision in the recipe.

What you need

For the chicken

• 700 g boneless chicken thighs, in 2–3 cm pieces
• 240 ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg

For the dredge

• 240 g plain flour
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 2 tsp fine salt
• 2 tsp white pepper
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp celery salt
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp dried mustard

Neutral oil for frying — about 1.5 litres.

Method

1. Mix the buttermilk, salt and egg. Add the chicken and refrigerate for an hour.
2. Whisk the dredge ingredients together in a wide bowl.
3. **Lift the chicken out of the buttermilk and let the excess drip off for a few seconds**, then drop into the dredge. Soaking wet chicken makes the flour pasty and it slides off in the oil.
4. Toss to coat, pressing the flour on. Shake off what is loose.
5. Rest the coated pieces on a rack for 10 minutes. The flour hydrates and turns from powder into a proper batter layer that stays put.
6. Heat oil to 175°C and fry in batches for 3–4 minutes, until deep golden.
7. Drain on a rack, not on paper. Paper traps steam and softens the underside.

Why the rest before frying

Dry flour on wet chicken is powder sitting on a surface. Given ten minutes, the moisture underneath wicks up into it and the whole layer becomes a dough-like skin bonded to the meat.

Fry it straight away and a portion of the coating detaches in the oil, leaving bald patches and a lot of debris in the pan.

Frying in batches

The oil drops 10–15°C when food goes in. Overload the pan and it drops far enough that the coating absorbs oil rather than sealing, which is exactly the greasy result people complain about.

Fry no more than a single layer with gaps, and let the oil come back to temperature between batches.

Storing

Three days in the fridge. Reheat at 200°C in the oven or air fryer for 5–6 minutes; the microwave turns the coating to paste.

They freeze well after frying. Straight from frozen, 200°C for 10 minutes.