The Secret Sweet Ingredient For The Best Flavor In Your Fried Chicken

Fried chicken is one of the most popular menu items in American and Southern restaurants. It makes appearances in sandwiches, atop waffles, and in its purest form, unadorned on a platter. In a classic chicken and waffles recipe, the fried chicken is drizzled with maple syrup, but in many other fried chicken recipes, it's drizzled with honey. If you've added a bit of cayenne or black pepper to the dredging flour, the chicken will emerge from the skillet spicy, and the honey takes the edge off the heat. But admittedly, it's a treat for those with a sweet tooth, but maybe not for people who prefer savory tastes.

Renowned chef Art Smith of Reunion restaurant in Chicago has devised a brilliant way to sweeten fried chicken without it getting sticky and sugary. Smith has been Oprah Winfrey's private chef and made appearances on various television programs, including "Top Chef." Rather than drizzle honey over fried chicken, Smith recommends adding it to the preliminary brine. "Whether you're doing a wet or dry brine," Smith told us, "honey can bring a beautiful balance to the salt." The chef's original brine recipe called for sugar. "But I took that out and replaced it with honey for a more natural sweetness." When asked about coating the chicken with honey before frying it, Smith advised against it. "It's tricky because honey can burn quickly at high heat." So home cooks should "stay cautious [and] apply honey after frying and incorporate it into the brine or butter instead."

Art Smith's original fried chicken recipe is famous for rendering chicken with a perfectly crunchy exterior and supremely moist meat. The brine is a savory blend of peppercorns, Kosher salt, garlic, and herbs, in which the chicken is submerged for 12 hours. But adding honey to the brine does more than infuse the chicken with sweetness. When mixed into a steak marinade, for example, the honey also tenderizes the meat, adds rich color, and depth of flavor. In Smith's recipe, after brining, the chicken is then marinated in buttermilk for four to six hours — a secret step for making the best fried chicken — before it's dredged in a savory flour blend and fried in canola oil, one of the best oils for frying because of its neutral flavor and high smoke point. 

At Smith's restaurants, the fried chicken is served along with award-winning goat cheese biscuits, but honey isn't poured on top. At heart, the chef is a "traditionalist" and not "a fan of drowning fried chicken in sauces." Instead, Smith blends honey into butter from local farms and slathers that over the chicken and biscuits. As the butter melts, it blends harmoniously with the honey, herbs, and spices in the recipe for a memorable meal you'll want to add to your repertoire.