Spice Up Fried Chicken With Your Favorite Flamin' Hot Snack

It's hard to beat the crackling, crunchy skin of fried chicken, especially when it's been dredged through seasoned bread crumbs. If you're a fan of the increasingly popular spicy fried chicken trend, flamin' hot chips are the secret weapon you need to spice up your dish. You can skip the numerous spices, herbs, and aromatic powders for an all-in-one flavored bread crumb mix with your favorite flamin' hot snack — whether they're cheetos, funyuns, ruffles, or tostitos. Simply toss a bag or two into a food processor to blitz until they're reduced into a powdery coating to dredge your chicken with. If you don't have a food processor, you can put them in a plastic bag and take a rolling pin to them like you would with a graham cracker or cookie crust.

Flamin' hot snacks will upgrade any fried chicken recipe, whether you're using cutlets, chicken fingers, or drumsticks and breasts. You have various avenues for dredging and cooking this hot fried chicken. You can marinate your chicken in buttermilk for classic buttermilk chicken or classic chicken tenders. The acidic buttermilk will tenderize your chicken and create a sticky surface for the flamin' hot layer. For a thicker coating on your crispy chicken cutlets, swap seasoned breadcrumbs for flamin' hot snacks. Perhaps the easiest assembly is with a creamy mayonnaise coating for the crushed chips to adhere to (try it in this recipe for crispy baked chicken tenders).

Since there are so many different flamin' hot snacks, you can control the taste of your fried chicken. Many flamin' hot snacks (like ruffles, cheetos, and tostitos) are gluten-free, which is beneficial to the texture of your chicken and fulfills the needs of gluten-free eaters. Potato and corn snacks provide useful starches that make for an especially crunchy fried chicken skin. Plus, the earthiness of potatoes and corn enhance the savoriness of the chicken and complement the spicy seasoning. Flamin' hot funyuns are another great option to layer an aromatic note on top of the spice mixture.

Just as there are numerous ways to dredge breaded chicken, you don't have to deep fry chicken to get the crispy crackling crust. In fact, pan frying, baking, and air-frying are mess-free and much safer ways to crisp up flamin' hot coated chicken. Less oil in a pan-fried cooking method and dry cooking methods like baking and air frying make it easier to control cooking temperatures, thereby preventing chicken breading from burning. You can bolster the texture of the flamin' hot coating by adding a few tablespoons of cornstarch to the dredging bowl or bag. Frying the coating will mellow its spice level, so if you're a fan of spicy food, you can amp up the heat some more. Add a teaspoon or two of cayenne, chili powder, or red pepper flakes to your flamin' hot snack coating for even more kick.