In the life of a habitual fried chicken–maker, there comes a time when you start to perfect your recipe, zeroing in on just the right brining process and figuring out the idealblend of herbs and spicesfor the breading. And although I'm still finalizing that elusive perfect mix, there is one ingredient that will definitely make it to the master recipe: black tea.
In one—admittedly ambitious—recipe, Sean Brock makes a fried chicken brine by steeping tea leaves in hot water and then adding equal parts salt and sugar. The chicken brines in the chilled, salty-sweet tea overnight before being soaked in buttermilk for an hour, floured, rested, and fried in five different kinds of fat. (I told you it was ambitious.) But the recipe results in a finished product that's at once spicy and sweet, crunchy and rich, boldly flavored but with mellow floral undertones from the tea.
Tea is such a natural addition to fried chicken because it adds a welcome touch of bitterness to the meat, which complements the juicy, rich, fatty, crispy bird. Plus, just as serving dinner with the same wine you used to make the pan sauce creates a cohesive pairing, the oft-pairedsweet teaand fried chicken dinner gets an extra complimentary boost by adding tea to the cooking process.
Although Brock's recipe is more of aweekend warrior project, you can apply the tea idea to any fried chicken recipe. If you're a devotee of a buttermilk-based fried chicken brine, toss in a few tablespoons of tea leaves with the rest of your brine spices. If you're all about the quick egg wash and seasoned flour dredge, use your spice mill to grind tea leaves into a powder to add to that flour. Or try adding tea leaves to both the brine and the coating—after all, if you're going to perfect your own fried chicken method, you've gotta eat it as many ways as possible, right? Experiment—it's for a good cause.
