When a monk named Dom Perignon was making wine in 1693 and couldn’t get rid of the bubbles he reportedly tasted it and exclaimed “Come Quickly, I am drinking the stars!” he probably wouldn’t have imagined that 300 years later on a continent that hadn’t been discovered yet it would be poured as a pairing to fried chicken.
Yep, that’s not a typo. Champagne and fried chicken. An odd but yet delicious pairing with the chicken crust matched with bubbles. Delicious. So this has become a favorite indulgence and thanks to the addition of a Sous Vide stick from Sansaire and our growing collection of fantastic grower champagnes from Somm Select (they offer some amazing wines, new every day and well worth checking out) it’s become even easier to make an amazing feast.
Why Sous Vide? Well I’m lazy, ok not really but I do like cooking off all the chicken in advance and Sous Vide is a great method for that. Just season and bag up the chicken, drop it in a water bath for a few hours and go about your day. Then when it comes time to fry all you’re really doing is re-heating the chicken and setting the crust. This makes it easy to cook off a large batch of chicken quickly and consistently without having to worry about undercooking.
There are no shortage of recipes available for Sous Vide chicken or fried chicken but not as many that deal with Sous Vide Fried Chicken so I did some hunting around through the internet and our collection of cookbooks and came up with a method combining a few different recipes.
I really like Thomas Kellers Ad Hoc cookbook and many of the meat recipes involve brining in advance of cooking. His fried chicken recipe is no different BUT I was in a hurry in this instance and didn’t have time to brine the chicken in advance so I tried to infuse some of the flavors from his chicken brine into the chicken during the sous vide cooking. In this case I added sage, rosemary, lemon and some thyme into each bag of 3-4 pieces of chicken. I seasoned fairly heavily, and in the end, result it worked pretty well, not as good as the brine but the chicken had some nice citrus and herbal undertones.
For the breading, I used a combination of flour with some onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper and baking soda. The chicken was already cooked so it was just a matter of dredging the chicken in the flour, then a dunk in buttermilk, then flour again before a quick fry of around 2.5 to 3 minutes at around 350 degrees.
Served warm with some great champagne and there you have it. A delicious meal and fantastic yet unexpected wine pairing.