Almost Fried Chicken

Those who know me, know that I never ever fry anything (frying being very different from sautéing). In fact, I don’t even know how and generally regarded it as evil.


I recently came across a recipe for Greek marinated fried chicken (kotopoulo tiganto marinato) that peaked my interest. It never occurred to me that you could marinate something before you fried it.

When I read the recipe, I was intrigued to see that they also had instructions to half-fry and then bake the chicken...this was looking more interesting all the time so, I put it on my meal list for last week and we had it for dinner last night. The original recipe can be found here on Epicurious.

I didn’t have enough lemons so, I chose to use a souvlaki marinade made of 1 part red wine vinegar, 1 part red wine, 2 parts olive oil and plenty of garlic, fresh oregano, a crumbled bay leave and salt and pepper.

The recipe says to remove the skin but, I forgot to do that and didn’t realize until after I had marinated the chicken so, I left it on and coated the pieces in flour.

From there, I followed the technique in the recipe except that I could not bring myself to put an inch of oil in the pan so it was probably half an inch. The recipe says you can choose to use a blend of olive and peanut oil but I used all peanut oil since olive oil has a lower smoke point and I felt that would make it harder to fry.

The frying went very well, no smoke, and not much mess. The chicken developed a lovely golden color and looked all crispy (sorry, forgot to take a picture :-(  ). The time required in the oven was much less than indicated in the recipe. I think it was about 25 min in the oven (I’m sure you all know I used a meat thermometer to confirm this). I was amazed to see that it came out just like it was supposed to and you could really taste the marinade. Jim gave an emphatic “GOOD” between (or perhaps during) mouthfuls....which, for Jim, is pretty high praise! Not sure I would do it again because I am still not a fan of fried food but, it was fun and tasty.