Cast Iron Oven-Fried Chicken

 17 March 2021

Recipe from Cook's Country, October 2018

I like fried chicken and I like homemade fried chicken. However, I don't really like dealing with the quarts of frying oil that it takes to deep fry at home. So I was very intrigued with this recipe that promises to provide something very close to deep fried chicken with less mess and less work. Would it live up to the promise?

I started with 2 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts and 2 bone-in, skin-on legs which I broke down into 8 pieces and seasoned with salt and pepper. A cast-iron skillet was placed in the cold oven which was turned on and set to 450°. While it heated, the coating was prepared. Eggs were beaten together with salt. Flour, baking powder, paprika, powdered garlic, cayenne, pepper, and salt were whisked together. Water was added to the flour mixture which was mixed with my fingers to form a shaggy dough. This was not as messy as it sounded as the amount of water was small. The chicken was dipped, one piece at a time, in the egg mixture, dredged in the flour mixture, then placed on a large plate. Once the oven had reached temperature the hot skillet was removed. Oil was added then the chicken, skin side down. (It was important to keep track of which was the skin side as was difficult to tell after the chicken was coated.) This was placed back in the oven and baked for 15 minutes. The chicken was then flipped and the skillet returned to the oven until the breasts reached 160° and the dark meat 175°. Total time: 70 minutes.

This was good fried chicken, especially considering how easy it was to prepare and to clean up after. The coating was reasonably crispy, nicely seasoned but not too spicy for us. As expected, it was not as good as deep fried chicken would be. But is it good enough given the ease of preparation? I'd say so, this is fried chicken worth making again.