"Ron M." > wrote:
> Generally, basically, how do commercial fried food places make their
> breading? I'm talking about that really thick, crispy, crunchy breading
> like on Popeye's or Kentucky fried chicken, etc. What are they dipped
> in and breaded with? What temperature is the oil they're fried in?
> I've been trying to duplicate it at home, but without much luck.

I tried a pretty good recipe for getting a very crispy thick crust that I
saw in the charter issue of that new magazine "Cook's Country", by the
"Cooks Illustrated" people. The recipe basically does a one hour soak in a
mixture of 2 cups buttermilk and 2 tablespoons of salt. This is followed by
making a mixture of 3 cups of flour and 6 tablespoons of buttermilk (and
spices). Not quite a dredge, not quite a batter. This mixture is "pressed
on" the chicken pieces one by one. It becomes obvious what they meant by
"pressed on" as soon as I tried doing it. The frying is more or less the
normal technique, first with the cover on the pan for 6-8 minutes, turn
pieces over, then 6-8 minutes with the cover off. I used my 70 year old
Vollrath cast iron chicken fryer with about 3/4" of oil to do it. The oil
started at 375, but dropped to around 300-310 and stayed down there.

I was very satisfied with the resulting thick crispy coating, a little less
so with the spices. They gave a spicier variant too. That's something I'll
experiment with further to get to my liking.