How can I cook a lot of "pan fried" chicken quickly?

Hi All,
How can I cook more of these faster?

Last night I was cooking up about 4.5lb of chicken breasts. I was making my simple version of country fried chicken. I cut the chicken into smaller pieces, whacked them flat with a cast iron skillet, dipped in flour, then in milk, then in bread crumbs. Then I put bacon grease in the pan. It was more than covering the bottom, but not enough to easily get a spoonful. Then I "fried" the chicken. The kids and family loved it... but even with the big skillet (15") I could only put 5 or so pieces in at a time. I was feeding 10 people, and because they were thin, the pieces were not super filling. It took over an hour of cooking and every time a few pieces came out, they were gone from the plate in seconds.

While I am happy that everyone liked them... it was hard standing there cooking and having all the kids saying "I get the next one", "no, you already got another one", etc :)  I know I could get a second skillet on the stove... but other than that, does anyone have any tricks or tips for being able to cook more at a time? Someone suggested the oven... but I don't think they would get as crispy?

Any help would be greatly appreciated by me and everyone else eating this the next time.

Kentucky Fried Chicken aka KFC is pressure cooked.

This:



And this:



https://instantpotcooking.com/instant-pot-fried-chicken/

While I can appreciate the pressure cooking method that KFC uses, It also uses specialty equipment specifically made for cooking with oil under pressure. Unless you have the right equipment, don't try it at home.  The Instant Pot method only cooks eight drumsticks per recipe, and it is presuming you have the big IP. I think what you're looking for is to serve a large volume of pan fried chicken all at once to a crowd of say up to 4 adults and 5 kids. That's a way different thing..

Let me check some of my sources but in the meantime I need you to verify this information. My assumptions are
1. you need at least 5 lb of cut up chicken or half a pound per person.
2.you have an oven or other heat source where you can hold the finished pieces at temp or at least a warmer place where the cooked foods may go down to room temperature, and you are ok to serve at that temp.
3. You can cook all the chicken and have it on the table within one hour (kind of a "food safe zone protocol).
4. You have a thermometer that you can use to test the temperature of the oil. If you have an Instant Read thermometer,  you can also test the temp of the food, and reassure yourself that what you're serving is hot enough for your guests. Many home cooks are so accomplished they can tell the temperature by how the food looks. That's not me.

https://chefsamanthageorge.com/deep-fried-chicken-in-a-pressure-cooker/
I scanned her pressure cooker recipe, above.. The recipe says to add 4 to 5 pieces to the pressure cooker depending upon the cooker size, but in the video she's only adds 3 pieces. So yeah the cooking itself is fast  But if you're cooking 20 pieces of chicken that's still a half hour or more. It doesn't include the time you may need to clean the cooking oil, add more oil, and bring it up to temp before you can cook again. Also, she's cooking bone in thighs and legs.  You're cooking chicken cutlets --  boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

If you do not have a pressure cooker and you don't want to buy one then I suggest you bring out your two biggest fry pans. Have all the chicken prepped before you start cooking (or get someone to prep the chicken while you're busy cooking the first two batches) Cook the chicken in both pans so you're doubling your output. Turn on the oven and put the cooked chicken in the oven on low heat to keep it warm. The chicken can be served certainly at a lower temp than what it's been fried at and all the way down to room temp if necessary. I don't think you need to be concerned with serving chicken even if it's at room temperature if it's say under an hour out of the fry pan.

Restaurants will par fry breaded chicken and put it back in the cold room (basically a walk-in refrigerator). Then it may be dusted with flour (or batter,) and deep fried to fully cook it right before it's served. But I don't think you want to go to that kind of trouble

I'll add as I get more info.

Hi Barbara,
Yes, I need at least 5lb... based on the small amount left over, I might need more next time.
I do have a stove I could keep things warm in.
I do have an instant read thermometer... though I want to get one with a thinner tip for smaller pieces of meat.

I suspect I would need to do what you are suggesting. Cook with two skillets and then keep them warm in the oven.

Matt, I suspect your issue is the "recovery time" of you grease. Every time you put a piece of chicken into the skillet, it lowers the temp. After 20 years in food service, I would suggest having a lot more grease in your skillet so that you are almost 'deep frying.'  More grease will maintain the heat a little better.  Can't have too much bacon grease. My heart surgeon doesn't share this viewpoint;

John Duffy wrote:Matt, I suspect your issue is the "recovery time" of you grease. Every time you put a piece of chicken into the skillet, it lowers the temp. After 20 years in food service, I would suggest having a lot more grease in your skillet so that you are almost 'deep frying.'  More grease will maintain the heat a little better.  Can't have too much bacon grease. My heart surgeon doesn't share this viewpoint;

I really hadn't thought about adding more grease... though I may need to render some lard specifically for this, as the bacon grease gets used for all sorts of things and I wouldn't have enough.

Hi Matt

Have you built an RMH yet?  If the 5 (or 10) pounds of chicken is going to become routine, another "stove" and a bigger pan might solve the issue.
Any chance of getting a prep line going so that you have each person doing one stage?
I've seen cast iron griddles with low edges, maybe they make a deeper one, sorta like a cake pan in cast iron, but with more surface than your frypan.
Amazon has one - yikes $$$  "Bayou Classic 7470 19.5-in Cast Iron Rectangular Roasting Pan Perfect For Roasting Pan Frying and Baking"
Good luck!
Randy

Air fryer, ours has a rotisserie feature. At 1200W, can run it off of the batteries. Pretty fast for chicken thighs.

Ok, so let's say you're cooking 8-10 lbs of boned chicken breast, that's flattened, breaded and pan fried. This narrows the focus, thanks.  Let's assume you're aiming for half pound servings or 16 to 20 pieces. And if I'm reading it right, you're cutting each breast in half, so 32 to 40 pieces. And this is dinner so eating around 6 pm.   You're getting about 5 pieces in the pan. Let's use 4 and call that 1 batch. 32 pcs = 8 batches, 40 = 10 batches. Criminy, that's a lot of pan frying. Let's give it a whirl.

But first. . .  consider using a higher smoke point oil -- any vegetable oil except olive oil. Olive oil is very flavorful and might ah, "flavor" the chicken.  You want to fry the cutlets in oil at about 350°-375°F so Canola Oil (a blended oil) is cheap, plentiful and great for this use. Any vegetable oil will work -- refer to the chart.

You're using bacon fat. Fair enough, but I don't think it's the best fat to cook breaded meats. Here's why. Bacon's Smoke Point is about 25°F lower than what you need to cook breaded meats. So in order to cook breaded chicken to crispy goodness, you have burn the bacon grease. It's also high in saturated fats -- a Bozo No-No according to everyone's doctor. Don't get me wrong, I love bacon and eat it at least once a week, but I don't re-use bacon grease.  More on bacon grease uses here. And yes, he does say you can cook meats in bacon grease -- just not breaded meats.

Back to cooking large quantities of breaded chicken breast.

1. Enlist the aid of a helper. Your efforts will be appreciated much more if there is a witness in the kitchen with you. One of the older kids may be interested.  If not, find an adult who wants to eat.  Don't use a kid who's not interested.

2. Set up everything you're going to need (Mise en Place) -- the pans, utensils, seasonings, breading station, work stations etc. Or at least set up to cut, then flatten the breast, then clean up and set up the breading stations, fry pans and warming oven.  

Watch and consider this method of cutting then flattening the breast from J. Kenzi Lopez-alt.  I think you'll get the thickness more even that way, and that means your cooking times will be more uniform batch to batch. You can cut and flatten the breasts and cut them in smaller pieces the day before or the morning of and put them back in the fridge in a container or plastic bag until it's time to cook.

3. You need 2.5 to 3 minutes per side for each batch, let's say 6 minutes total. So it'll be about a half hour to cook 8 batches in two pans, and about 50 minutes for 10 batches in two pans. This is good news. It means you can hold batches 1 - 7 or 9 in the oven without losing much in the way of crispness.  Just don't make a dog pile of them if you have the room. Consider laying some parchment paper on a sheet pan and spread the cutlets over as much area as you have. If you need to, use two oven pans rather than pile the cutlets on top of one another.  Or, do it the Japan way -- stack the fried food on its edge against one another, instead of on the flat side.

4. Keep the batches in a warm oven -- around 200°F until ready to serve.  You can save yourself a bit of clean up if you have an oven safe platter large enough to hold all the cutlets.  Then just stick that in the oven and stack the cutlets on their edges on it and use mitts to bring it to the table.  If you take the mitts away, it prevents hungry people from grabbing the platter -- they actually have to ask someone to put a few cutlets on their plate. It's also good to have the other foods (except bread) on the table first. Then bring the bread and cutlets to the table at the same time.  Ask me how I know

I hope this helps!

Hi Barbara,
Thank you for that post. There is a lot of good stuff in there, and I think it will greatly help me the next time I do this. One thing I found particularly interesting was the bacon grease smoke point.

Barbara Manning wrote:But first. . .  consider using a higher smoke point oil -- any vegetable oil except olive oil. Olive oil is very flavorful and might ah, "flavor" the chicken.  You want to fry the cutlets in oil at about 350°-375°F so Canola Oil (a blended oil) is cheap, plentiful and great for this use. Any vegetable oil will work -- refer to the chart.

You're using bacon fat. Fair enough, but I don't think it's the best fat to cook breaded meats. Here's why. Bacon's Smoke Point is about 25°F lower than what you need to cook breaded meats. So in order to cook breaded chicken to crispy goodness, you have burn the bacon grease.

I tend to use animal fats where I can, instead of vegetable oils... but the smoke point got me thinking. An interesting point is that while bacon grease smoke point is 325... rendered lard is 370. So something about the curing of the bacon must lower the smoke point.

I'm kind of excited to try this again now.

To summarize what I have learned so far.

1. Add more fat/oil so the temp can be maintained better
2. Use two pans to cook twice as much
3. Use the oven to keep it warm while doing batches, then serve all at once
4. Use something with a higher smoke point than bacon grease.

Now, I'm going to have to try this again and let you all know how it went.

Matt McSpadden wrote:To summarize what I have learned so far.

1. Add more fat/oil so the temp can be maintained better
2. Use two pans to cook twice as much
3. Use the oven to keep it warm while doing batches, then serve all at once
4. Use something with a higher smoke point than bacon grease.

Now, I'm going to have to try this again and let you all know how it went.

Yay! We both learned something.  Funny thing.   I did a bit of research on rendered pork fat (lard) and rendered beef fat (tallow) but then didn't include it because I thought it was tangential to the subject.  But now that I understand more about why you want to use animal fats, I can include it.

Using animal fats is ok, just understand that animal fats are high in saturated fats, which is thought to be not so healthy for the modern man.  By that I think the medical community means folks who live in cities with desk jobs -- folks like me. Unless we do a lot of exercise, we can't use the saturated fats up fast enough and they lie around in our bodies, primarily around the stomach.  But if your a farm boy or girl, you get a lot of exercise and probably better exercise -- i.e. a full body workout that lasts for 6 to 8 hours a day. I am not a farm girl, but I've been on enough farms to know that my friends who are farmers are far stronger, more agile, and flexible than I will ever be.  See this article from Healthline

And yeah, you're right. Rendered pork and beef fat both have a high smoke point -- higher than what you need for chicken cutlets, so you're good to go to cook with them. See here for pork and here for beef.  

But you are not good to go to cook with bacon grease, I believe. Bacon may be a rendered fat, but it brings a lot of brine, salt and chemical or natural smoke with it -- it depends on the brand and the processing plant. So in my mind, bacon is a highly processed and (probably) chemically smoked meat. And while the fat in it might reach the smoke point you need, it's method of ah, coming into being (for lack of a better way to say it) is far more industrially processed than lard. I suppose that if you cooked enough bacon and filtered the grease to (at least) remove all the meat bits, you could cook the cutlets in a cleaner bacon grease. But you'd still be cooking the chicken cutlets you've just spent hours preparing in a fat that has already been heated (and probably heated right up to the smoke point) once by virtue of the fact that you cooked it for breakfast.  I think that if you are going to go to the trouble to make 10 freakin' POUNDS of chicken cutlets, why would you use 'second time around' grease? Why not go the whole way and use freshly rendered lard?  If I was doing all that work, that's what I would do.

There's an interesting discussion on the topic of pork fat here. It gets more into the nitty gritty differences. One of the responses to @Marcus tells how the author makes bacon that renders a lard that's pure white.  Hint: it's not cook in a skillet.

When my mom fries chicken she does it in a large electric skillet and makes sure the chicken gets brown and crisp, then finishes it in the oven.  But that's with large cut up pieces of chicken, not with small flat pieces.  

Never thought of it before but is reverse sear an option for chicken?  It might not work with the thin pieces as the time is in browning not internal temperature but maybe with regular sized?  Would a cast iron skillet hold the temp of the grease better to avoid deep frying?
No longer trust my memory but seems I once heard of heating bacon grease in a little water to remove the impurities and then skimming it off and evaporating the water.  Would that improve the smoke point?  Don't know how much that might affect the flavor that is desired in my eggs.  Might have to try it.  

I would deep fry them. That way, you can add more pieces (perhaps twice as many) to your pan at the same time. And both sides cook simultaneously, so you don't have to turn them over (cutting cooking time in half).  In this way, you can cook 4 times more chicken in the same elapsed time.

Electric pots with thermostat control work lovely for deep frying: set and forget.

All of a sudden I'm hungry for hot off the stove fried chicken. My wife makes excellent fried chicken but darn it always makes a mess. Then there is all the leftover oil that won't keep until the next time around. So we just get it at the grocery store deli, darn it.

Jr Hill wrote: . . . fried chicken but darn it always makes a mess. Then there is all the leftover oil that won't keep . . ..

Tips:

# Bone in fried chicken should gently boil in the oil.
# Consider using a frying thermometer to regulated the heat  
# Keep the oil between 350°F and 375°F (175°C and 190°C), Don't let the temp drop below 325°F (163°C).
# Bring the chicken to as close to room temperature as you are comfortable with before you bread it. The object is to reduce the range of temp between the oil and the breaded chicken.
# you can partially cover the chicken to reduce the splatter, or
# use the deepest pot you have to contain the splatter.

Oil:
# Make sure you're using an oil with a high enough smoke point. If the oil you're using has a low smoke point then you are burning the oil the first time out in order to cook the chicken. That reduces the oils life.

# strain out the bits if breading, meat and other flotsam in the oil before storing it covered, in a cool, dark place

# consider using just enough oil to cover one layer of chicken when frying. At least this way you're not tossing so much..

I hope that helps.