Baked / Fried Chicken

It took a many tries to get this right. We had a version while in Vegas and i like the idea of having the fried chicken crunch without all the oil in fried chicken.

Baked / Fried Chicken

Ingredients

2 whole chickens cut up
2 quarts of butter milk
1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup of corn meal
3 teaspoons ground cumin
3 teaspoons of ground mustard
3 teaspoons of paprika
3 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 table spoon of salt
1 table spoon of ground black pepper
Vegetable oil

Directions
Take two large ziplock bags and place one cut up chicken in each and fill each with one quart of butter milk and chill over night.
Day two
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
Prep one large cookie sheet with foil then place a rack on top of foil covered cookie sheet.
Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Now take the chicken from buttermilk and coat in the dry ingredients, coat all the chicken very well in the mixture. I drop two pieces at a time in the dry mixture and and let them sit for about a minute on each side in the mixture. While coating the chicken place a large deep pot over heat heat and fill with oil to about 1 1/2 inches deep. You want to get the oil to 360 degrees, but when I was first trying to recreate the chicken recipe i did not have a thermometer so i just kept the heat up to high and let the oil heat for about 10 minutes and then i took a 3 minute break between dropping the chicken in the oil to let the temp come back up.
Once the oil is hot enough start frying the chicken, working with 2 pieces at a time fry the chicken for about 3 minutes on each side. Remove from oil and place on the rack you prepped earlier. Once all the chicken is fried place cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 35 to 45 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the crust is a nice golden brown. I rotate the baking sheet in the oven at the mid point.

I serve this with the one of the slaw's from yesterdays post and my spicy roasted potatoes.

Enjoy cooking