Also because I’m not working for about.com anymore where I was publishing dozens of articles about just East Asian food I’ve decided to become a bit more adventurous with my food blog and that’s why if you compare my website recently to say a couple years ago there’s more diverse food.
Why am I doing this? Well sure I’m from Taiwan, my grandparents were from China etc etc and I have a lot of knowledge about Eastern food but I studied Western cooking at food college and I worked in Western restaurants for many years so I do know a lot of Western style recipes. I also like to eat out and try different cuisines when I can. Who knows I may end up doing some Indian curries at some point.
I’ll certainly go back to cooking some of my favourite Taiwanese, Chinese and other East Asian foods in the near future but right now I’m on an inspired food journey and I’m having lots of fun on it.
Today’s dish is a completely new dish to me and while I’ve cooked lots of fried chicken at home and in professional kitchens, I’ve never made buttermilk fried chicken before so I researched a good few buttermilk fried chicken recipes online and in the end I came up with this recipe that I think tastes delicious (my husband and daughter definitely approved!).
I’m a big fan of paprika so I put some paprika in the chicken marinade. In fact one of the favourite simple dishes in my home is chicken marinated in paprika and finely chopped garlic served with roast vegetables. My husband loves roast garlic which amuses my daughter when he tells her “it’s to keep away the vampires”.
So I put a decent amount of paprika in this dish but you can adjust the amount of seasonings in this dish to suit your own taste.
I also made some pickled vegetables and a sriracha mayo to accompany the buttermilk fried chicken in the sandwiches which I made. If you think there are too many ingredients then you can leave them out. As with a lot of East Asian dishes and especially my own cooking, seasonings are entirely adjustable.
A bit of sweet and sour pickled vegetables contrasts perfectly with the greasiness of the fried chicken and makes the whole dish more balanced. If you have some pickled vegetables left over you can store them in a clear container in your refrigerator for up to 7 days. If you want you can make the pickled vegetables and sriracha mayo the day before you make this dish to save time, although this is a pretty quick dish to make.
Buttermilk Fried Chicken Sandwich
Ingredients
Main Ingredients
- 1 kg chicken breast cut into long strips
- 1 cucumber peel it like a long ribbon
- 1 shallot sliced
- 1 carrot peel it like a long ribbon
- 6 raddish slice
- 2 long baguettes
- 650 ml oil
Ingredients for chicken marinade
- 180 ml buttermilk
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp salt
Ingredients for pickled vegetables
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 lemon grass
- 3 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 250 ml water
- 1/2 tsp salt
Ingredients for spice flour
- 170 g plain flour
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp coarse black pepper
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tbsp butter milk
Ingredients for sriracha mayo
- 1 tbsp ketchup
- 1 tbsp sriracha sauce
- 4 tbsp mayonnaise
Instructions
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Marinade chicken overnight with all the ingredients for the marinade. If you can’t marinade overnight marinade at least 1 hour before cooking. The longer you marinade the better the taste.
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Mix all the ingredients for the pickled vegetables into a small sauce pan. Bring it to a boil then simmer for 10 minutes.
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Put the sliced radish, sliced shallot, ribbon cucumber and ribbon carrot into a container or bowl. Pour the step 2 sauce into the bowl and gently mix it evenly. Leave it for at least 30 minutes.
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Mix flour, garlic powder, paprika, black pepper, baking powder evenly in a bowl then mix with buttermilk. You will see the flour will look a bit lumpy but that’s ok.
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Heat up oil in a saucepan or deep skillet. The oil temperature should be 180 c.
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Coat the chicken with the spice flour from step 4 and leave it for a couple minutes.
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To check if the oil is the right temperate, you can put a piece of the spice flour crumb into the oil and if the crumb immediately bubbles and floats on the oil then the temperature is perfect for frying the chicken.
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Deep-fry the chicken until golden brown.
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Slice the baguettes 12cm long and slice horizontally.
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Spread some sriracha mayo first then put a couple slices of fried chicken and some pickled vegetables into the sandwich. Make sure to drain the vinegar from the vegetables before you put them in the sandwich or otherwise the sandwich will be soggy.
