Keep Your Fried Chicken Crispy For Hours With One Easy Tip

Perhaps Minny Jackson said it best in 2011's "The Help" (the role that won actress Octavia Spencer her first Oscar): "Frying chicken just tends to make you feel better about life." There's something about that crunchy, juicy first bite that is just so heartening and so satisfying — also making it so very disheartening when your homemade dish turns soggy and loses its crispiness.

If you've put in the effort to home-fry your poultry, the last thing you want is for your chicken to get sodden before it's served. Fortunately, there's a simple solution that cooking experts agree on to preserve that crispy texture for hours at a time.

Simply place those freshly fried thighs and breasts on an oven-safe cooling rack atop a baking sheet, then toss it into a low-heat oven (between 200 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit). This not only allows excess oil to drip onto the baking sheet, but the baking rack lets the warm air circulate, keeping your chicken crispy as well as heated over a period of time. In addition to keeping the meal warm and crisp, the low-temp oven does so without drying out the meat or making it overdone.

Home cooks tend to place their freshly fried chicken on paper towels, believing this will drain the oil from the meat and absorb it into the towels, keeping the outer skin from becoming soggy. But this is actually one of the simple mistakes that can ruin the crunch factor in your dish. That's because paper towels create a steamy environment that softens the texture and will prevent preserving that perfect crust.

Beyond keeping your fried pieces oven-warmed on a baking rack, there are a few more things you can do during the cooking process to further aid in achieving crisp poultry, such as double dredging the meat (use buttermilk or egg wash, then dredging in your preferred dry ingredient mixture). This double frying process can also boost the crunch factor, since you'll be frying the meat after dredge number one, applying your second dredge, and then frying a second time, typically at a higher temperature.

Other, more unorthodox practices can also help ensure extra crunch, like adding vodka to your fried chicken recipe. The spirit evaporates more quickly than other liquids commonly used for frying, making the batter dry more rapidly in the cooking oil. Vodka additionally slows production of gluten in flour-based batters, resulting in a less dense, crispier coating. You can additionally borrow wisdom from some of the international locales that have achieved fried chicken success (Korean cuisine, for example, is renowned for employing the double-fry method in fried poultry dishes).