The Only Fried Chicken Dredge You Need, According To Ludo Lefebvre

There's nothing like taking your first bite of crispy fried chicken and hearing that audible crunch as your teeth come into contact with its seasoned crackly coating. And while this coating lends chicken a golden, craggy surface full of flavor, it also serves another function — preventing the protein from drying out as it deep fries. According to chef Ludo Lefebvre, prepping the best coating for fried chicken doesn't need to be a complicated affair that requires heaps of different flours, breadcrumbs, or eggs. In fact, as he told Food & Wine magazine, all you need is a simple dredge in a single ingredient — cornstarch.

The classic way to make fried chicken is to dredge it in flour that's been seasoned with salt, garlic powder, pepper, and more. The flour adheres to the protein because it's often been steeping in a marinade (usually a natural tenderizer, like buttermilk). Lefebvre's technique employs a wet marinade packed full of flavor (soy sauce, chili oil, and sesame oil with garlic and ginger), which eliminates the need to season the dredging flour. This means you can simply dip your marinated chicken straight into a bowl of cornstarch without bothering with extra ingredients or coating it with egg. The key is to firmly press the cornstarch onto the surface to create a visibly thick layer, rather than quickly lifting it in and out. The high proportion of starch in the cornstarch creates a super-crispy crust when deep fried.

Cornstarch is almost pure starch, which allows it to crisp up more effectively than regular flour which also contains fiber and gluten (a protein). The composition of a standard bag of flour can also hamper its ability to create that appetizing snap when deep fried resulting in an almost chewy texture. 

When cornstarch is added to a dish where moisture is present, say in a stew or sauce, it swells up, gelatinizes, and has a thickening effect. However, when deep fried it develops a crispy, almost brittle texture as the hot oil drives the moisture away from the marinade that's clung to its surface. This is why cornstarch features so heavily in Asian dishes that are dredged prior to frying, like Korean fried chicken, where a thin, crispy surface is called for. As cornstarch is finer than flour, it also coats the surface of the fowl more evenly, resulting in fried chicken that's balanced and crispy all the way around because it's cooked through at the same rate. Having said that, some fried chicken recipes combine flour and cornstarch together because regular flour develops a golden color more effectively than cornstarch alone.