Fast and Crispy Fried Chicken for a Crowd
Everyone loves homemade fried chicken, but serving it to a crowd takes too long—or too many pots of oil. We’re here to show you how to speed things up and still serve hot, crisp, juicy fried chicken to everyone at once.
Fried chicken is one of America’s greatest dishes. Yes, yes—other countries fry chicken too, but what you probably think of when you think of fried chicken is the American way of doing it: whole, bone-in chicken pieces, breaded and seasoned with spices like cayenne and garlic powder, then fried in hot oil. But this iconic staple does admittedly come with some unique problems that only smart temperature regulation can fix.
Grab your ChefAlarm® cooking thermometer and timer, and let’s learn how
Fried Chicken’s Biggest Flaw
Fried chicken is one of those magico-alchemical things that happens in kitchens. You season chicken, dredge it in flour (often after a buttermilk bath), and fry it until the internal temp is just right. It’s a combination of simple ingredients, purposefully combined into something greater than the sum of its parts. But here’s the catch: it takes a long time to cook.
We can only fit three or four pieces in our fry-pot at a time, and they take 12–20 minutes to finish. That’s already a long wait for the lucky folks who are first in line—everyone else has to wait even longer. When you’ve got a crowd to feed, that also means multiple pots of oil, or piles of chicken hanging out in the oven (getting soggier by the minute) while the rest cooks.
Professional kitchens solve this with pressure fryers or massive vats that hold 50+ pieces at once. But the average home cook doesn’t have either.
Sous Vide: The Secret to Faster Fried Chicken
We want that hot, crisp fried chicken—just faster. That’s where sous vide comes in. By cooking the chicken through first, before you bread and fry those pieces, you only need a quick fry to finish. That means juicy meat and crunchy breading in about three minutes per batch, instead of 20.
Why it works:
- You can make a whole sous-vide vat of chicken all at once. Cooking two whole chickens worth of meat in one large pot is no problem.
- Because you cook them sous vide, each piece hits its target temp exactly. Use your ChefAlarm, with the optional Pro-Series® Waterproof Needle Probe inserted into the largest pieces, to monitor the temp as they cook. There’s virtually no chance of dry meat now.
- Seasoning before the sous vide step means deeper flavor all the way through.
- Sous viding eliminates the need to temp each piece out of the fryer. You already cooked them safely before they went into the oil—now you’re just building that golden crunch.
The result? Chicken that’s tender, juicy, full of flavor, and downright delicious. Another advantage: This method even works for chicken breasts, which usually dry out before the centers cook through—sous vide them to a safe, juicy 158°F (70°C), and fry time doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, keep your thighs in the sous vide a bit longer for dark meat perfection. (Curious why it’s safe to go under the USDA’s recommendation of 165°F? Check our post on chicken temps.)
And the best part: cooking the whole bird this way saves money. Buying two whole chickens and cutting them into pieces costs far less than buying a pile of pre-cut parts—sometimes even less than a single tray of thighs or drums.
The Best Oil Temp for Frying Chicken
Ok, so you’ve sous-vided all the chicken, now it’s time to bread and fry.. Proper oil temp is essential to nail this part.
When your ChefAlarm finishes sous vide duty, swap out the needle probe for a longer, high-temp probe with a grate clip, and start tracking the oil while the breading sets. (ChefAlarm is honestly the best deep-fry thermometer out there.) You’ll want the oil in your Dutch oven to hit 350°F (177°C). At this temp, the breading browns in about three minutes without scorching—and ChefAlarm will beep if the oil gets too hot or cold.
We have obviously written about fried chicken before. From classic fried chicken to crispy chicken sandwiches to tenders, we’ve covered it. But no other method works as well for feeding a whole crowd of people as this one. Cook it all perfectly using ChefAlarm in a sous vide bath, then bread the chicken and fry it in mere minutes. Your family will be happy, your friends impressed, and all their stomachs full. Happy cooking!
Fried Chicken for a Crowd Recipe, a.k.a. Sous Vide Fried Chicken
Ingredients
- 2 whole chickens cut into 8 pieces each
- 3 Tbsp kosher salt divided
- 3 Tbsp freshly ground black pepper divided
- 1 Tbsp paprika
- 2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 2 C buttermilk
- 2 eggs
- 1 Tbsp hot sauce
- 3 C flour
Instructions
- Mix 2 Tbsp salt, 2 Tbsp pepper, and the rest of the spices together. Season the chicken with this mixture. Optional for deeper flavor: let it all sit in the fridge overnight.
- Prepare the chicken for sous vide by vac-sealing it or putting it in well-sealed zip-top bags. Insert a Pro-Series Waterproof Needle Probe through some sous vide tape into the thickest part of one of the breasts. Place a piece of sous vide tape on one of the thigh bags, too, so you can easily move the probe there once the breasts are done. (They’ll always take a bit longer.)
- Put the chicken in a large pot fitted with a sous vide circulator. Set the circulator temp to 185°F (85°C).
- Start cooking. Set ChefAlarm’s high-temp alarm for the chicken breast to 158°F (70°C).
- Meanwhile, mix the buttermilk, eggs, and hot sauce together in a large bowl.
- Mix the flour with the remaining 1 Tbsp each of salt and pepper in a large bowl.
- When the chicken breast alarm sounds, remove the bags with the breasts from the water and set aside while the rest of the chicken comes to temp. Move the needle probe to the pre-taped bag with the thigh and reset the high-temp alarm to 180°F (82°C).
- When the thighs reach temp, remove them from the water.
- Cut open the bags, remove the chicken pieces, dip them in the buttermilk, then dredge them in the flour. Set them on a cooling rack placed in a baking sheet. If you want your chicken extra-crispy, dip the pieces back in buttermilk, then in flour again!
- Fill your pot with oil and start to preheat it to 350°F (177°C), using ChefAlarm to watch the temp. (Switch from the needle probe to the optional straight probe and use ChefAlarm’s included pot clip to attach it to your oil pot.)
- Fry the chicken in batches, cooking just until the breading is a beautiful golden brown, 2.5–3 minutes.
- Remove the chicken and rest it on a paper towel- or butcher paper- lined baking sheet.
- Repeat with the rest of the chicken, until it’s all cooked.
- Serve with your favorite accompaniments—collard greens, maybe some black eyed peas, and biscuits or cornbread.
My son is allergic to eggs, what can I substitute in the buttermilk bath?
Aquafaba could work, probably. It’s the liquid from a can of chickpeas—that thick “beany” liquid. It’s used as an egg substitute in many places, and it may work well here, too. But if that fails, just the buttermilk can work ok, too.