Fried chicken burger with pretentious asian-italian fusion flavours

Fried chicken burger with pretentious asian-italian fusion flavours

Have you ever dreamt about having your own pretentious restaurant that complicates things for no other reason than to stand out? Now is your chance at home. American fried chicken burger with an asian-italian onion sauce flavored with sage and star anise. Topped with a Polish “miseria” cucumber salad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very tasty, but so are the hipster places that overcharge you. Oh, and there’s bacon fat in the buns!

Chicken sandwich

The bacon buns

Soft and bacon tasting buns!

Ingredients for the buns

  • 140 to 250 grams of milk
  • 50 grams of water
  • 50 grams of bacon fat (fry 500 grams of bacon, set aside the bacon and use the fat that’s left in the pan)
  • 1 large egg (or two small ones)
  • 400 grams of white flour (maybe more but careful)
  • 25 g of sugar
  • 1 teaspoons salt (careful, the bacon fat will be salty too)
  • 1 tablespoon dry instant yeast or about 20 grams of fresh yeast

How to make the chicken burger buns

  1. Activate the yeast by mixing it with sugar and lukewarm water. Wait for about 10 minutes. If you don’t, it will still turn out well, you’ll just have to wait longer further into the recipe.
  2. Meanwhile, fry the bacon. Until it’s all crispy and nice. Actually, just before it’s crispy because it will crisp up when it’s set aside on some paper. As for the fat left in the pan, you’ll use it in the next step. Mix and knead all the rest of the ingredients, by hand or mixer, to make a soft, smooth dough. It shouldn’t be too dry. It might even look way too liquid, but just keep kneading it until the gluten develops and it gets all stringy and tacky. And even then it might feel too soft, but don’t add too much flour. It should be really soft when you make the buns, and you’ll use flour on the table then.
  3. Cover the dough and let it rise for about 30 minutes.
  4. Deflate the dough and make buns out of it. About 120 grams per bun.
  5. Arrange the buns on a baking sheet and cover for another 30 minutes.
  6. Bake in a preheated oven on 250 degrees C for about 15 minutes.

The coleslaw-like salad

Like coleslaw but different.

  • Two large tablespoons of creme fraiche. By large, I mean way more than two tablespoons really.
  • Juice from half a lemon
  • A teaspoon of sugar
  • A pinch of salt
  • Some ground black pepper
  • Half a cucumber
  • Half a small white cabbage
  • A clove of garlic
  1. Mix the creme fraiche, lemon, sugar and salt.
  2. Grate the garlic and mix it in there.
  3. Chop the cucumber and cabbage.
  4. Mix it all up, cover and refrigerate until it’s time to serve.

The onion sauce

The best from two worlds!

  • A large onion
  • One star anise
  • 6 sage leafs
  • 50 grams of butter
  • 25 grams of olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
  • 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons of sugar
  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and add oil. The butter has this nutty buttery taste, and it works great with the flavorous olive oil.
  2. Thinly slice the onion and fry it in the fat together with the star anise. If you’re in a hurry, you can speed up the caramelization by adding half a teaspoon of sugar, but there isn’t really a need to stress it. Let it fry on medium-low heat until the onion is all brown and the star anise gives it all an amazing aroma.
  3. Now remove the star anise, and add all the rest of the ingredients. You’ll have a sweet and sour, extremely flavorsome savory marmelade-like thing that works absolutely amazingly with any fried meat.

The chicken

Let’s not complicate it. No batter, nothing. Just deep fried chicken with a flour and spice coating.

Ingredients for the chicken

  • About 200 grams of flour
  • A teaspoon of paprika powder
  • A teaspoon of onion powder
  • Half a teaspoon of garlic powder
  • 500 grams of lard or coconut oil (or any oil with a high cooking point really, if you’re not using lard, but lard really make a difference. Not only does it taste good, has amazing frying properties. It also gives you heart diseases and makes you unhealthy. Unless you work-out to stay fit in which case… You know what, just use lard in any case)
  • Chicken breasts (let them sit outside for 20 minutes, so they’re not refrigerator cold when you put them into the oil. Or else they’ll get all soggy because of the lowered temperature when cooking)

Ho to prepare the chicken

  1. Melt the fat in a large saucepan or a deep frying pan. Keep it at 175 degrees C. It might lower a little when you put the chicken in there, but don’t overcrowd the pan and you’ll be right up there at 175 degrees in no-time.
  2. Mix flour and spices in a large bowl.
  3. Take a chicken breast and “butterfly cut” it to make it larger but thinner. Meaning, you cut it along the broadside, but not all the way. And then you unfold it like a book.how to cut the chicken
  4. Coat the chicken in the spiced flour. Everywhere, all over it. A thick coating.
  5. Into the oil for 2 minutes, and turn around for 2 minutes. And then back into the coating to coat them again. And into the oil for 5 minutes on each side. (unless it’s a really deep deep-fryer, in chich case I guess you don’t need to turn them because they’re submerged)

Assembly of the chicken burger

  • Some chopped parsley
  • The onion sauce
  • The cucumber and cabbage salad
  • Fried chicken
  • Pinches of salt
  • The bacon you fried earlier
  • The bacon bun
  1. Open up that bun.
  2. Add some sage sauce.
  3. Place the crispy chicken on there. It will be much larger than the bun, and that’s good!
  4. A pinch of salt on the chicken.
  5. The cabbage salad on top of it.
  6. Bacon and chopped parsley.
  7. Smear some onion sauce on the top bun and place it on top.
  8. You’re now ready to eat!

Chicken burger

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