You Are Frying Chicken in the Wrong Oil.
Many foods can be fried to perfection— pickles , potatoes, small pieces of cheese—but nothing fries quite like chicken. At best, fried chicken is hot and juicy on the inside, and crispy and gritty on the outside. Frying chicken isn’t difficult, but it takes a long time and leaves a thin film of oil on every surface in your kitchen. If you’re going to go through all of this, you have to do it right, and that starts with choosing the right oil.
There is no perfect oil for frying chicken. There are many good options to choose from, but good chicken fat must meet three basic criteria: it must be cheap, have a high smoke point, and be odorless.
Chicken oil for frying should be cheap
Not only is expensive fried chicken against the very nature of the dish, no one roasts a small amount of chicken. If you’re going to fill your home with a frying oil scent that’s less pleasant than it sounds, you should be getting a hearty (large) amount of fried chicken out of it.
Cooking large quantities of chicken requires a lot of oil, at least a quart or two, depending on the size of your chicken pan. (Even so, you still have to work in batches.) Don’t waste your money on fancy fats. Frying chicken in chicken schmaltz might be tempting, but it’s prohibitively expensive (for most) and probably won’t taste all that good, which conveniently brings us to our next criteria…
Get an oil with a smoke point that is higher than the frying temperature.
One of the biggest fried food crimes that can be committed is frying at too low a temperature, resulting in soggy, sad bites, but frying in burnt oil is no better. For crunchy, crunchy results, the oil temperature should be between 325℉ and 350℉. This is the goal, but depending on how deftly you control the heat output of your stove burners, you can crawl above or below these temperatures while frying. Adding cold chicken to hot oil will cause the temperature to drop each time, so you’ll have to fiddle with the knobs throughout the cooking process to keep it hot (then adjust in the other direction to cool it down when you inevitably overcompensate) .
Using an oil with a smoke point of 325℉ (like schmaltz) or 350℉ (like unrefined coconut oil) might seem like a good idea—they fall within our range—but try to keep your oil at exactly 325℉ for schmaltz. will result in uncooked breading, and instantaneous temperature rises above 350℉ when using unrefined coconut oil or similar can produce smoke that can give your chicken a burnt, pungent taste. Skip all that nonsense and give yourself some wiggle room by buying oil with a smoke point of 400℉ or higher.
The less flavor the better
I’m a big fan of using fragrant oils for bougie instead of canola or vegetable oils in some cases, like boxed pistachio or olive oil, but they don’t belong in fried chicken. Not only are these oils expensive, but the fragrant chemicals that make them so good can’t even withstand the high temperatures they’ll face. They will burn or simply burn, giving the chicken an unpleasant taste.
You want refined oil that has been stripped of anything that can smoke or burn at high temperatures. Vegetable oil, canola oil, lard, and vegetable oil (Crisco) are all excellent candidates. Extra virgin olive oil is tricky as its smoke point can range from 350℉ to 410℉ , but I still wouldn’t use it due to its cost and taste. (I don’t want my fried chicken to taste like olive oil.) Refined peanut butter is another good option. It has a fairly high smoke point of 450℉ and does not impart a peanut flavor, but it is a bit more expensive than others. (If this is your favorite dish, make the most of it by brushing it with gelatin between batches.)
When in doubt, take something cheap and practical. Fried chicken was never supposed to be fancy.