Rántott Csirke / Fried Chicken

Fried Chicken / Rántott Csirke

Credit: Marika’s Kitchen

Ingredients

  • 8 Pieces Skinless Boneless Breast
  • 8 Pieces Skinless Boneless Thighs
  • 2 Cups Flour
  • 6 Eggs
  • Italian Bread Crumbs (as needed)
  • Salt
  • Oil – enough oil or lard to cover bottom half of chicken in frypan. I use olive oil or avocado oil or a high quality lard

Directions

  1. Wash chicken and pat dry.
  2. 2 bowls for flour and beaten eggs, and 1 cookie sheet with sides for bread crumbs.
  3. Salt both sides of each individual piece of raw chicken and ready them on a cookie sheet or bowl.
  4. Using a fork and keeping your hands dry, coat chicken with flour, shake off excess flour.
  5. Dip in egg and let the excess egg drip off.
  6. Coat with bread crumbs. Pat bread crumbs on firmly with hands and shake off excess bread crumbs.
  7. Continue this process with each piece of chicken storing them on something like a cookie sheet and putting parchment paper between layers.
  8. Heat oil over medium heat in fry pan to 350 degrees F. I set my Saladmaster Electric skillet and am able to set it to 350 degrees F, but you can also use a thermometer to check the oil temperature.
  9. When oil has reached 350 degrees, fry as many pieces as will fit comfortably into your frypan. With the cover on, fry thin skinless boneless breasts for 3 minutes per side, skinless boneless thighs for 4 minutes per side and bone in and skin on thighs around 7 minutes per side until a golden brown. Use timer! Meat thermometer should read 165F.
  10. Carefully flip each piece over, carefully cover and continue to fry for another 3 minutes. Use timer!
  11. Store chicken on rack in a covered roaster, stacked sideways like dominoes to keep pieces from getting saturated with the dripping moisture from the other pieces. (If condensation collects on the inside of roaster cover, wipe dry with paper towels.)
    NOTES & TIPS:
  1. Making fried chicken is kind of like assembly line work. See pictures for example. If you streamline the process it will be more manageable. It is very helpful to have separate forks for each step!
  2. I use separate bowls for flour and egg bath, cookie sheet or 9x13ish baking dish/pan with sides for breadcrumbs. 1 cookie sheet for raw chicken by my flour dish and another cookie sheet next to my breading container for breaded pieces.
  3. Pat the breadcrumbs into the chicken well and shake off any excess loose breadcrumbs. The least amount of loose breadcrumbs that sprinkle into the oil when frying, the better your frying oil will be for frying your chicken.
  4. One friend asked how I managed to keep the breading on the chicken? Their hands got so intermingled between the water from the chicken, the flour, egg and breadcrumbs that they had a terrible gloppy gloopy mess on their hands. Another friend asked how I keep the breading on the chicken?! I had no idea what they meant until they told me they tried frying all the pieces at one time… Keep hands dry, using forks when needed and using hands to put breading on, while always keeping dry breadcrumbs between your hands and the egg covering the chicken when breading.
  5. I remove and bread the little tenders from the breasts and little odd pieces hanging off the thighs and the Grandkids love them.
  6. Hopefully, there are enough pictures and enough instructions to come up with a good game plan to make some incredible fried chicken!
  7. Finding the right pan and the right heat temperature for the oil in pan being used is the biggest trick to making yummy fried chicken.
  8. I use an electric stainless steel skillet outside to do my frying to spare the house from the after effects that come with frying foods. Marton Mama always fried her chicken in the garage in Canada during the winter months for the same reason and I have adopted this in all my frying recipes.
  9. Set electric skillet to approx. 350 degrees. When I suspect that oil is ready for chicken, I drop in a little pinch of the breading to see if oil is hot enough to sizzle. If frying on the stove, start out at medium and adjust as needed to keep chicken frying without burning or stalling.
  10. Cast Iron is a great choice for this dish. Thin cheap low quality cookware usually doesn’t work the greatest.
  11. When frying chicken, it is important to get the oil hot enough to fry without burning the oil or the chicken. Frying chicken is a slow steady process. If the oil is too hot the breading will burn but the chicken will remain raw.. Not pretty or tasty at all! If oil is not hot enough, it will just soak into the chicken without sizzling. Neither option will succeed in its attempt to fry scrumptious chicken.
  12. I always fry like pieces together (similar sized thighs, usually three or four max at a time, or similar thickness breasts … Three max at a time to ensure breading gets golden while staying in tact on the chicken. Usually, for normal size skinless boneless thighs and skinless boneless breasts that I cut in half to make two thin breasts rather than one thick, is 3 minutes per side and I set a timer every time. Makes all the difference. 😉
  13. More time will need to be added to bone in pieces of chicken. I usually go 4 to 5 minutes per side for bone in and skin on thighs (my favorite!)
  14. When opening lid to flip chicken, be careful to drip condensation that collects on inside of your lid behind your frying pan so it doesn’t drip into your frying oil and create added hot oil splatterings..
  15. Just as much as under-fried chicken is unappealing … over fried chicken is no replacement for chicken that has been perfectly fried to that point that occurs just after it has fried enough to not be raw.
  16. Since every piece of chicken is different in size and shape, and the temperature of your oil or the thickness of your frying pan varies from kitchen to kitchen, it is difficult to put a time frame on cook times. Thus, I have posted a lot of pictures to hopefully illustrate how it could look.
  17. One more note. If I buy chicken breasts with bone in, I simply remove all the skin and fat and fillet it the same way leaving the last fillet attached to the bone. I remove the big sternum bone (I think that is what it is called) simply because it is easier to bread and fry without it. My kids don’t like chicken bones so more often than not, I simply use the boneless breasts. Dan and I like our chicken on the bone so it just depends…
  18. This same process can be used for pork chops, pork cutlets, Veal cutlets, Green tomato slices, eggplant, zucchini… etc.

    19. Good Luck and ENJOY!

Family Favorite!

For thinner chicken breast fillets. use a sharp knife to cut chicken into thinner fillets. Depending on the size of the fillets, I cut them into anywhere from two to four fillets. Make sure you have a good idea where the blade is in relation to your hand.

NOTE: it is helpful to have separate forks for each step!

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