Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Ad Hoc Fried Chicken

I'll be honest: I find the design of Ad Hoc at Home to be fairly obnoxious. All of the chalkboard sketches and pictures of Thomas Keller grinning like an idiot? Yeah. I could live without those... I guess the idea was to make a cookbook that was more accessible and/or less intimidating, but that's really not what I'm looking for when I turn to Thomas Keller. I'd flipped through the book a few times, but always got irritated and gave up on looking through it before I found anything I wanted to cook. Nonetheless, word on the street was that the fried chicken recipe is awesome, and my friend over at jun-blog had made the recipe at home with impressive results. (The recipe is included in his post, by the way, if you'd like to try this at home...) My parents are in town visiting, so I figured it would be a good time to try the recipe out. (I don't want to fry a whole chicken for myself, and I don't like experimenting with new dishes for people who aren't family or the close-friend equivalent of family...) In the end, it turns out that even Thomas Keller's most annoying cookbook has some great recipes...
The first (and critically important) step in the recipe is to brine the chicken. The brine combines lemons, thyme, bay leaves, parsley, garlic, black peppercorns, honey, and kosher salt.
If you're paying attention, you'll notice that the recipe makes 2 gallons of brine, which is enough for 10 pounds of chicken, so you can make a partial batch if you're just doing one chicken. I, of course, was not paying attention, so I went ahead and made two gallons of brine... Jun made the great suggestion of brining up a whole big batch of chicken and then freezing the brined chicken for later use. This chicken was totally awesome, and I could see myself just brining a big pile of chicken breasts so that I could pull one out to fry up for a quick and delicious dinner rather than always having to do a whole chicken or ending up making a big batch of brine just for a chicken breast...
Things are warmed in a big pot until the salt is dissolved, then the brine is chilled before use. I bought a larger chicken than Thomas Keller recommended because, again, I was not paying attention. (We were planning for about 6 different cookbook recipes when we went grocery shopping, so a few details slipped by...)
The chicken is cut into 10 pieces, which can be done following Keller's instructions...
The dredging mixture combines flour, salt, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and cayenne, as well as a coating of buttermilk.
When the chicken has brined for 11 or 12 hours, you rinse it in cold water, pat it dry, and you're ready to go...
(My dad was in charge of dredging so my hands could stay clean for picture taking...) First into a bowl of the flour mixture...
... then into the buttermilk...
... then another dip in the flour mixture...
... then set aside on parchment while dredging the rest.
The dark meat cooks for longer at a lower temperature, and is followed by the breasts and wings at a higher temperature...
When everything comes out of the fryer, you find yourself with some of the most insanely delicious fried chicken you've ever had.
The dark meat was so tender that I found myself doing a double-take to make sure it was fully cooked (which it was... it was just crazy-tender...) and the breasts were extremely moist and flavorful. The lemon and herbs from the brine are a beautiful accent, and the crust was nice, light, and crispy... We served it up with grilled corn, and sat around feeling quite pleased with ourselves...
We tried a fantastic steak marinade from Ad Hoc at Home last night, and have started preparation of the Pork Belly Confit for tonight. I still find the format of the book annoying, but so far the recipes result in some amazing food... which I guess really shouldn't come as a surprise to me from Thomas Keller at this point...