The Super-Fine Flour Jacques Pépin Constantly Uses For Fried Chicken
There's no right or wrong way to season fried chicken. You can use KFC's 11 herbs and spices, come up with a blend of your own, or just go with a store-bought spice mix. But while the flavor of fried chicken is relatively flexible, when it comes to texture, there's only one option that's considered correct: crispy. Soggy fried chicken isn't exactly appetizing, and it's usually an indicator that it wasn't properly made. Per Southern Living, fried chicken won't crisp up if you use too much flour or a thick layer of batter.
The same can happen even if your ratios are spot on. Most people will let their fried chicken cool on a paper towel, but according to Bon Appétit, this actually causes steam to collect. As a result, the once crispy skin will turn soggy. Luckily, there's a way to prevent this from happening altogether, and Jacques Pépin says it's all thanks to a simple ingredient substitution.
Jacques Pépin swears by Wondra flour
Most recipes call for frying chicken in all-purpose flour, while others use panko or even cornflakes. But when Jacques Pépin makes fried chicken, he uses something called Wondra instead, The Splendid Table reports. As The Takeout explains, Wondra is actually the brand name, but the product itself is quick-mixing or instant flour. Pépin apparently prefers Wondra over the generic kind.
Instant flour differs from all-purpose flour in a number of key ways, mainly because it has a lower protein content, and undergoes pre-gelatinization. This essentially means that it gets steamed. Once it dries, what's left behind is pre-cooked flour. Then as the final step, it gets pulverized until it achieves a consistency that's much finer than regular flour. This is what makes Wondra such an effective thickening agent for gravies and soups, but according to Jacques Pépin, it's just as useful for fried chicken.
Why does Wondra flour produce crispier fried chicken?
The main reason Wondra flour produces crispier fried chicken is because of its lower protein content. As America's Test Kitchen explains, the less protein flour has, the less moisture it'll be able to hold. This is especially important in fried chicken because moisture is precisely what makes the coating soggy. The more you fry a chicken the more moisture evaporates out, but with regular flour, there's only so much frying you can do before it starts to char and burn. Wondra on the other hand, because of its low protein, doesn't brown as readily, and that means you can fry it for much longer.
This is especially effective, Kitchn says, because Wondra is an ultra-fine flour. Since it's less prone to clumping, you won't end up with any pockets of gummy breeding that are created when the flour soaks up too much moisture. The resulting chicken fried chicken is so perfectly crispy it's no wonder Jacques Pépin prefers it over run-of-the-mill flour.