Best-Ever Fried Chicken with Food Editor Hunter Lewis

[Narrator] Skillet-fried chicken.

It's the ultimate American comfort food.

Here's how to make it.

So the first step is to season the bird.

Salt's the key here,

it's gonna take the flavor to the bone.

You can let this sit overnight.

It's gonna keep the chicken juicy.

And what I mean by flavoring to the bone is,

even when this chicken is cold,

after it's cooked, you're still gonna taste the flavor.

You want do set up your dredging station,

working left to right.

Got my chicken here,

got a buttermilk egg wash,

seasoned flour

and the hot oil in my skillet.

Use my left hand to dip the chicken in the buttermilk,

go right into the flour.

I'm gonna fry in two batches,

five pieces at a time.

I'm gonna shake off all that extra liquid

before you go into the flour.

In the flour, you just wanna gently toss it around,

nice even coating,

and I've got cornstarch in here,

it's gonna help the flour bind to the chicken.

Shake off the excess

and nestle it in the oil.

So we start at 350, added the chicken,

it's been a few minutes.

The temperature's dropped down to 325

and that's where you want to fry it.

You want to turn it every two minutes or so,

to get a nice, deep, even golden brown.

So we're gonna use an instant-read thermometer

to take the temperature of the chicken.

Lookin' for 160 degrees inside,

we're almost there.

All right, so our first batch is done.

You wanna let the chicken drain in the skillet

for a couple seconds before you transfer

to a rack, set inside a baking sheet.

So the chicken's been out of the skillet for 10 minutes,

it's ready to serve hot

or it's just as good tomorrow cold.

That's the mark of real skillet-fried chicken.

For this recipe and thousands more,

go to bonappetit.com.