A diet of primarily beef, like most carnivores consume, may make chicken seem boring, but not when you can make flavorful, all-animal product fried chicken!
Ingredients
- Four raw chicken pieces
- 1 cup full-fat plain yogurt OR 2 eggs
- 1 cup pork rinds or cracklings
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1-2 cups oil for frying
Instructions
- Fill the bottom of a pan with enough oil to cover at least half of your chicken pieces and bring to medium heat.
- Put pork rinds or cracklings in a blender or food processor and grind until they reach a fine consistency. Pour into a wide bow and stir in the salt and any other spices you wish.
- Coat your chicken pieces in either yogurt or a beaten egg.
- Roll the chicken in the ground pork rinds or cracklings.
- Carefully place the chicken pieces one at a time into the oil. After about 5-10 minutes and once the underside has turned a dark golden brown, flip the chicken and cook for about the same amount of time. Cook longer the thicker the chicken is.
- Remove from the oil with a fork or a utensil that allows some of the oil to drain, and enjoy!
The measurements for this recipe are not exact and will vary depending on the size of your chicken and the size of your frying pan.
I always recommend the higher fat, more flavorful and lower cost dark chicken meat such as thighs, legs, and wings, but any will work. You don't need to worry about flavorless, low-fat chicken breasts for this recipe if that's what you have because you will be adding plenty of good fat and flavor!
You may want to cut your chicken into thinner pieces if they are big. The thicker the pieces are the longer they will take the cook, and it can be difficult to cook the chicken through without over-cooking the breading for thick pieces.
I used yogurt for the chicken pieces photographed in this post. I like using yogurt because it tenderizes the yogurt as well, but eggs are a great alternative for those avoiding dairy or completely avoiding carbs. Check out my instructions for tenderizing chicken with yogurt here. The yogurt can also remove any "old" chicken taste your pieces might have. For this recipe, I followed the same procedures for this recipe but instead of washing the yogurt off, kept it and used it to stick the breading to the chicken.
My go-to yogurt is Fage Total 5%, which is made with whole milk and cream, and has 11 grams of fat and 7 grams of carbohydrates for 1 cup. It is the highest fat, lowest carb yogurt available at standard American grocery stores. Additionally, some people argue that yogurt has less carbohydrates than listed on nutrition facts, because the bacteria eats the lactose sugars and converts them to lactic acid, which is not a sugar.
I have made this recipe with both pork rinds and cracklings that I made from rending beef tallow. See instructions here. The pork rinds are drier and make a somewhat easier breading, but the cracklings are a great way to use leftover beef fat, which would usually go to the waste, and have more fat and flavor. Your cracklings may still be fatty enough that they don't grind into a dry flour. Once ground, mine stuck together a bit and I had to pat them into the chicken rather than just being able to roll the pieces in it.
Any animal-based cooking fat will work great for a carnivore preparation. I prefer to use lard, which is just the leftover oil I keep from cooking bacon. Try to find a small pan as close in size as possible to just one or two of your chicken pieces to avoid having to use a lot of oil. However, the oil can be strained and re-used afterwards.