The Best Gluten Free Fried Chicken Recipe Ever! | Fearless Dining (2024)

FAQs

What is the best gluten free flour for frying? ›

To make your own gluten-free flour blend for fried chicken, simply combine: 1/2 cup white rice flour, 1/2 cup millet flour, and 1/4 cup arrowroot or tapioca starch.

If your oil temp is too high, your fried chicken will be scorched on the outside with meat that is undercooked. If the oil is too cool, your chicken will be greasy and will lack the golden-brown crispy exterior you want.

This is done by first poaching the chicken in water with spices (e.g. star anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, Sichuan pepper, ginger, fennel, and scallions), drying it, coating with a syrup of vinegar and sugar, letting it dry thoroughly (which helps make the skin crispy) and deep-frying.

You can use a variety of ingredients to replace flour when frying chicken. Some popular alternatives include breadcrumbs, cornmeal, crushed cornflakes, ground oats, or even potato flakes. Will the chicken still be crispy without flour? Yes, it is possible to achieve crispy fried chicken without flour.

Brown Rice Flour

It's the primary base flour in our Gluten-Free Flour Blend, and also makes a great breading for things like Crispy Shallots.

Here are the ABC's of gluten free frying:

The best types of fat for frying are oils with a high smoke point (the temperature at which the oil starts to smoke when it is heated up) and a high proportion of simple, unsaturated fatty acids such as palm kernel oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil or clarified butter.

The Korean fried chicken is super crispy because potato starch is added to its batter and the chicken is fried twice. This second frying also cooks off the excess water in the chicken from the first frying. Korean fried chicken is known to stay extra crispy for a long time, even with a glazed surface.

KFC swears by high-temperature, industrial-strength pressure fryers for their extra-crispy skin. While you won't be able to deep fry with your at-home pressure cooker, you can still recreate the KFC crunch with a deep fryer, a Dutch oven, or a heavy-bottomed pot.

When paired with all-purpose flour, cornstarch helps prevent gluten development, which makes the flour coating crispier, and absorb moisture (from the frying and the chicken), which also means a crispier coating. If you already have a favorite fried chicken recipe, try replacing a quarter of the flour with cornstarch.

Why do you add baking powder to flour for fried chicken? ›

FLOUR + CORNSTARCH + BAKING POWDER

When mixed with the flour, the cornstarch makes the flour coating crispier and gives it that golden brown color! (It has to do with prevention of gluten development.) The baking powder reacts with the oil and creates tiny air bubbles, which also helps form a crispy coating.

Brown rice flour is high in fiber and gluten-free. It has a very subtle, bland flavor, so it can work well in many recipes without having an impact on how the food tastes. It isn't the best option for baking, but it can be a healthy flour substitute for frying.

Almond flour: Almond flour is a low-carb, gluten-free alternative to wheat flour that can be used as a coating for fried chicken or as a binding agent in meatballs or meatloaf. Almond flour is high in fat and protein, which can help to make the coating or meatballs more tender and moist.

Rice flour and cornstarch work particularly well because they fry up crispier than wheat flour. They also absorb less moisture and fat during the frying process, making the products less greasy.

White Rice flour.

This is what I use as my all-purpose gluten-free flour. I like it for dredging, thickening -- really anytime I need a tablespoon or so of regular flour (like in this chocolate cake recipe). It has a very mild taste and seems to play nicely with most foods.