Whether for a picnic, everyday family meal, or even special dinner. Fried chicken is actually an excellent choice to be made so that everyone got served on any occasion. Nowadays, with more and more styles of the crispy, salty, tender staple becoming widely available all around the world.
There are so many factors to choose from when it comes to preparing, cooking, and serving fried chicken. Stick to the classic chicken wing, or get creative and fry up breasts and thighs. Some enjoy hot sauce on the side, while others swear by a smothering of gravy.
All in all, these are the 9 best or popular types of fried chicken from around the world:
1) Country-Fried
This is kind of the OG of fried chicken as we know it that is flour-breaded, oil-fried, and simply seasoned. Curiously, it started off in Medieval Europe as things known as ‘fritters’, though it was often also seen at tribal feasts in Africa. The two styles came crashing together in the American South, where fried chicken paved the path for pretty much every food in the south to get breaded and fried. The style is a base. Any honey-kissing, spice-kicking, or other moves are just glorious flourishes.
2) Broasted
Like many things that conspire together to taste delicious and make us fat, the technique of broasting originated in Wisconsin. It’s essentially the country-fried method’s high-falootin’ big-city cousin, utilizing a combination of pressure cooking and deep-frying to craft chunks of bird that maintain the perfect skin/breading crispiness without compromising the moisture of the meat inside.
3) Buffalo Wings
The story of the Buffalo wing which is sometimes debated boils down to Anchor Bar matriarch Teressa Bellissimo’s last-minute effort to feed a hungry group late at night by improvising, tossing some wings meant for soup stock in the fryer, hitting them with some Frank’s, and inadvertently creating the most iconic bar snack of the 20th century. Since 1964, the wing has become more associated with Buffalo than the Bills and has dominated bars and restaurants the world over.
4) Buttermilk
Sometimes known as Chicken Maryland, there are a few key differences between buttermilk-fried chicken and the country-fried kind: First, it’s marinated in thick buttermilk for extra flavor. Second, it’s traditionally pan-fried in a skillet rather than submerged in grease, then covered, allowing it to steam up and lock in juices while the cook can ladle grease over top to keep the outside crispy. Often, it’s also served with creamy gravy.
5) Korean
Long before the folks in Buffalo realized the magic of chicken wings, Korean joints were popping out these super-crispy beauties, which are seasoned with spices, chilis, and sugars before being fried so they’re not messy. Then they’re fried again. Because that’s awesome.
6) Popcorn
Basically Americanized karaage for those whose preferred breading/chicken ratio runs between 50/50 and 70/30. These bite-sized wonders started out as passable appetizers before the big fast-food joints caught on, resulting in little boxes of popcorn chicken pretty much all over the country. Consider them a nugget/tender hybrid that is more acceptable for adults.
7) Karaage
Often also spelled kara-age, it’s a staple of izakayas and ramen shops. The karaage method can be applied to pork, seafood, or any number of delicious proteins, but it’s at its most iconic and delicious with chicken. Chunks that are often thigh are chopped into smaller pieces, marinated, breaded in flour or starch, then lightly fried to create the most poppable chicken snack known to man. Unless you’re at a place that serves it bone-in rather than in little popcorn-size bites. You don’t want to pop bones.
8) Nashville Hot Chicken
For a while there, Nashville’s chicken was the hottest thing on the fried-chicken market. Well, actually, it was always the hottest thing on the market but for a while there, everybody seemed to be making a variation of what Prince’s, Hattie-B’s, and others have long been working at heavily cayenne-spiced hunks of bird available in spice levels ranging from hot to crazy hot. Some are so spiced they glow like cartoon lava. It’s become a national obsession, but it’s still 1,000% Nashville.
9) Chicken 65
The origins of Chicken 65 are surprisingly heavily debated for a style of chicken that has its roots in the 1960s. Some say it was invented at a fancy Chennai hotel. Some say soldiers came up with it. The meaning of that “65” is even more fiercely debated, but whether it’s called chicken 65 because it’s made with 65 spices or from 65-day-old chickens or a chicken cut into 65 pieces is kind of irrelevant when the South Indian favorite hits the plate. You won’t care what it’s called when the intense flavors of ginger, curry leaf, chili, and more transfer from the lightly breaded chicken thigh into your mouth and then radiates into the rest of your body.
Sources: Thrillist