Pim's Thai Fried Chicken

What can I say, I love fried foods. And the latest new recipe I tried was Chez Pim's Thai-Marinated Fried Chicken. Pim's secret is using rice flour. I tried rice flour once with the Korean Fried Chicken Wings to see what kind of crust it produced. Rather than mixing in the rice flour with the sauce, I marinated the wings in the sauce alone and then dredged in rice flour. The resulting crunch was nice but the color of the crust had a whitish/grey color. This is what happened with my Thai fried chicken, too.

If you look at Pim's pictures, hers are nice and golden brown.

And you see here mine, it's got some golden brown but didn't turn out as pretty as Pim's. The slight white/grey coloring, almost powderish looking crust was on all of the drumsticks. But it sure tasted good and the crunch was very nice! Maybe I coated mine a little too much with rice flour and should have been more of a dusting, now that I compare my picture to Pim's. In Pim's, you can see some of the chicken and meat, where mine is completely coated. The oil temperature may have been a little too low too since it was taking almost 15 minutes on the first side and another 8 minutes on the second side. I'll have to play around with the heat a bit more. (I figured out why this happened! See my postscript at the end of the post.)

But even if my drumsticks aren't as pretty, they sure were tasty! As a matter of fact, The Mister said he'd rather have these over the Korean Fried Chicken Wings! I don't know if I'd go so far to compare the two since they are 2 different birds (ahem, sorry for the bad pun). They both deserve their own spotlights I think. The Thai fried chicken is salty, savory, and you can just make out the garlic and cilantro taste. The Korean fried chicken is all about the spicy-sweet balance. Different tastes, different crusts. Both really good.

So if you like Asian-style fried chicken, this is one you're got to try!

Postscript: SO! I figured out why my drumsticks were getting the gray color after frying. Thinking about it now, I feel kind of silly that I overlooked such a simple thing. I was at 99 Ranch last week and decided to pick up a new package (different brand) of rice flour. As I was looking over the brands, it dawned on me that the rice flour I had at home which I used for these drumsticks were probably glutinous (mochi) rice flour. I decided to buy a Thai brand of rice flour and when I came home, compared the two and sure enough, that was it! That was my problem, wrong kind of rice flour. Sheesh.

I made a batch with the correct rice flour and it turned out golden brown just like Pim's and tasted even better than with the glutinous rice flour. It was so crunchy and it didn't really matter how much rice flour I had on the drumsticks. I have to agree with The Mister now that I think I like these over the Chicken Alice-style fried wings.