What makes fried chicken delicious? We’re glad you asked. At FourStates Wholesale, we empower you to serve consistently delicious fried foods. Beyond just selling you the essentials needed for the task, we educate you on the basics of how to combine our high-quality breadings, marinades and cleaning solutions to produce a mouthwatering result.
Breadings
Breading is all about the external texture of the food. Cornmeal based breadings produce a gritty, responsive crunch with a relatively thin, dense fried shell. On the other hand, flour based breadings produce a much smoother, melt-in-your-mouth texture. It’s still crunchy, but not in a gritty way. It also tends to puff up during the frying process, producing a lighter, crispier shell with wide variations in thickness.
Breadings can also add to the flavor profile you’re building. We carry spicy and original seasonings, and often work with restaurants with specific recipes in mind. Adding or removing spice from the breading can add dimension to the flavor of the chicken.
Marinades
Marinade is all about the internal texture of the food. It helps to make meat even more tender and juicy.
To explain this process, let’s look at some simple science. Meat is full of muscle and connective proteins which are tightly bound together, and contains a lot of water. Marinades use enzymes to break down protein bundles, making the surface easier to chew. Additionally, marinades can help the outer layer of meat lose some of it’s water, helping create that satisfyingly crispy crust.
Moreover, any seasonings in your marinade will help to flavor the outside of your meat. People have often thought that these spices could penetrate the meat when meat sits in a marinade, but recently scientists have discovered that spice molecules are simply too big to get far into the meat. However, meat is still enhanced by the flavor on the surface of the meat and most palettes can’t distinguish between surface flavor and deep flavor.
Clean Oil
Oil can retain flavors from everything that’s ever been cooked in it. With time, it begins to have a strong flavor and imparts that flavor to the food that is cooked in it. Additionally, as oil degrades the chemical reactions leave byproducts which can lead to smoking oil and burned food. All of these can compromise the flavor that you’re trying to make. Keeping your oil clean or fresh can help achieve the intended texture and taste of your recipes.
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With time, and the right ingredients, you can produce amazing fried food products that will keep your customers coming back for more.