Easier, maybe, but rarely better, at least for the inexpensive places. Frying chicken is very easy, IMHO, and every bit as good as any fast food place. Same with making hamburgers from ground meat, yet there are still burger chains every 5 feet. Pizza and chinese food need specialized equipment or ingredients that everyone may not have access to, or want to buy, to get right, but even then, home varieties can often improve on fast food.
Also, keep in mind that pan-fried chicken is not the same as the type of chicken you’ll get when you go out and grab a bucket of chicken. Since the chicken will be in contact with the bottom of the pan, it’ll (naturally) be darker in those areas. The first time you flip it, you may think you’re burning it, but it’s supposed to look that way. Chicken from bucket places and the grocery store are usually deep-fried, and that’s why it has that uniform color and crispy exterior.
A lot of fast food places cook their chicken in pressure fryers.
Just as an update, I set some chicken (breast and thighs, bones removed and torn/cut into roughly same-size pieces) to brine this morning, and I’m going to try pan-frying them for lunch when I get home as practice for tomorrow.
I’m going to buttermilk them, then dredge in salt/pepper flour, then egg/buttermilk them, then panko. Let sit for a few minutes, then shake well, then fry in about a half-inch of veggie oil.
I’m still wavering between poaching them before frying, or ovening them after frying. I think I’m leaning towards ovening them afterwards, because that will give me time to make the deviled eggs up, and I don’t have to worry about the chicken bits being hot when I’m trying to dredge them in cold/cool stuff.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
Skinless & boneless chicken pieces will cook much more quickly than bone-in chicken. You may not need much cooking afterward. Good that you’re doing a test run!
I make fried chicken every now and then. It’s a bit of work, but it’s hardly rocket science. This is the recipe I use. I got it from my sister, and she got it from, I think, Martha Stewart:
Brine for 2 hours in 3 quarts of water + 6T table salt.
Rinse the chicken off, dip it in 1/2 c buttermilk + 2 eggs, beaten together.
For the breading, mix 1 1/2 c flour, 1/4 c cornmeal, 2 tsp thyme or oregano, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper in a big plastic bag. I also throw in a little paprika. Obviously this can be varied. Put the en-buttermilk’d chicken into the bag, and shake it up to coat.
Pull the coated chicken out, put it on a rack that’s on a cookie sheet, and refrigerate the coated chicken for another 1-2 hours to let the coating set.
After that, fry away. The recipe recommends about 1/2 inch of oil at 365 degrees. Put the chicken in skin side down and cover the pan. Let it cook for 5 minutes. Take the cover off and let it go another 5 minutes, then flip the chicken and cook uncovered for 8-10 more minutes. Check to see if it’s done before removing. Keep the oil hot enough to bubble vigorously, but not out of control. Temperature control was something I was really paranoid about the first couple of times, but if you screw up and let it get too cool, it just means you have to cook it longer. Too hot means you might burn the coating, but if it’s too hot, you’ll know it. It’ll be like mini bombs going off all over.
Like I say, it’s a bit of work, but the results are quite good. I get a hankering for fried chicken every now and then, and this fills the bill. My wife hates chicken on the bone, so I do a couple boneless skinless breasts for her, and they turn out well, too.
Good idea on the test run.
Just a safety tip. You DO know what to do in case you get an oil/grease fire right? And what not to do?
Interesting. The Peacock recipe seems very fussy to me, and I wondered how anybody with a hungry family found the time to go through all that. Apparently, they don’t. I’m not from the South and have almost zero experience with restaurants there, other than NOLA. My best dish from that area is biscuits and gravy, which I’ll put up against anybody’s anywhere, anytime. 
Spray it with the shower attachment from the sink while screaming for my husband, right?
No, I kid.
A pan lid usually does it, but we also have baking soda in a huge bin next to the stove, and a brand new dry-chem fire extinguisher that lives right under that.
The specially designated kitchen extinguisher arrived after I learned the hard way that when your recipe tells you to broil something at 500+ degrees on the very top rack, they don’t tell you the important secret information which is that this recipe is a bad idea when using a gas stove. 
Good
An important point. Don’t panic and do things so fast you knock that flaming container of burning oil over because that can be really bad mkay?
Another point. While an apparent fire in progress is a bit scary also don’t panic and use a fire extinguisher unless you suspect you need to. Unless you like dusting your whole house and every nick nack in it after the excitment. If you DO have to use one, as soon as you can turn off the central air unit and close every door in the houshold.
Hope the project goes well!
Oh why, WHY, do I ever open food threads at the end of my work day? A few posts into the thread I was thinking about how my mom used to fry chicken and it was pretty good and I never have but I’m fairly capable in the kitchen and I should be able to …
Then I remembered I’m on my own, and I’m not going to go to all that work and mess to fry 2 pieces of chicken. I will however stop and pick some up, or I’ll have fried chicken dreams.
I have to say though…its been awhile since I’ve had Popeye’s chicken and while I wasn’t totally underwhelmed, I didn’t find it particularly awesome. Not as good as what I can make here, nor as flavorful. Now I need to make some of my own.
And its not that much work or mess to fry two pieces of chicken…buck up, poultry soldier!
Good luck with it, but all I can say is that
1: Fried chicken may look simple, but it usually takes several attempts in a particular kitchen and cooking scenario esp with respect to heat levels and cooking times until you get the variables just right, and it’s very easy to wind up with a burned or soggy mess. Timing is everything with this dish and it involves real world trial and error.
2: Fried chicken is not a food I would be frying in a pan on an electric stove as this can be quite dangerous.
It’s absolutely not a dish I would be serving to guests on my initial attempts. I’d go another direction if I was in your shoes.
I’m thinking perhaps a quality electric frying pan might do the trick. Regulated heat and no danger of flash fires.
No egg/buttermilk/panko second coating. It will burn.
Just buttermilk, and then either season them directly and then into flour, or put some salt and pepper and whatever else into the flour.
No poaching before. Ovening afterwards is OK to keep them warm, but not to finish cooking, and not if you’re doing, say, two dozen deviled eggs.
Invest in an instant read thermometer if you don’t already have one. That will satisfy you that the chicken’s done, although you’re using small enough pieces so it shouldn’t be an issue.
And I also applaud you for doing two PITA recipes on one menu. Deviled eggs are a huge pain in the ass. I need to hole up some week with a couple quarts of Jack Daniels and some chicken wire and twist ties and invent a hard boiled egg peeling device or whatever device can be invented with those three things.
Really? Deviled Eggs were one of the *only *things my mother taught me how to make - they’re super-super easy for me. Heck, I don’t even think of them as cooking - they’re like sandwiches - just assembly. Boil eggs, peel, cut in half, scoop out yolks, make into nifty creamy stuff, spoon back into egg halves, nom nom.
In other news, I used boneless breasts and thighs, and had them cut into roughly palm-sized bits, and I cut one open after frying it, and it was solid white all through, so it seems like they cooked pretty well. Didn’t end up either poaching or ovening them after all.
I had the oil too hot at first, I’m pretty sure, so my first two were a little on the… um… dark side. I also had to stop and scoop out little bits of crusty crap that broke off after each one, but that didn’t seem to hurt anything. The spatters weren’t too bad - not any worse than when husband does bacon.
I liked how super-crusty they are with the panko - it seemed to work out ok. I need to use more salt and pepper when I do them tomorrow, tho - they were pretty bland. I might use some coarse-ground mustard in the buttermilk bath tomorrow… I’ll try that on just a couple of them and see it that tarts them up a bit.
It really wasn’t that bad!
Bravo!
I think deviled eggs are a pain in the ass because when I do 'em, it’s usually three dozen or more at a time. It’s the peeling.
I recommended against panko because it was your first time and the classic recipe is just buttermilk, salt, pepper and flour. The only other thing you could use to try to make it fool-proof on the first try would be a candy/fat thermometer, but nobody really uses those.
Now that you have one batch under your belt, feel free to go wild on ingredients and technique.
Also, I hope you ate the crusty crap. I would.
I agree with your Panko assessment. It’s really really works well for sauteed and baked foods, but can burn easily at high temps if one isn’t careful. It also tends to fall off the food you’re cooking, as happened with Lasciel.
You’re absolutely right, Chefguy, it’s a restaurant recipe. it’s worth it at home as a special occasion recipe, but I usually just skip the brining step these days.
You say the word and I’m there for biscuits and gravy. (Scott Peacock did that dish very well at his restaurants, too.)
You may not know this, but Edna lived with Scott in Decatur for the last few years of her life.
Johnny - Have you considered getting an induction burner? You can get a single burner and can control the temperature to a pretty fine degree.
StG