Chicken Maryland Recipe – Best Kind of Fried Chicken is one of the dishes that my kids and husband absolutely LOVE! Its a famous recipe within the Navy Chefs in Pakistan and was handed down to me by one of them. You can also watch the video of this recipe at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhhNXXMib5Q

This Recipe starts with perfectly boiling the chicken, whereby I prefer to use boneless chicken thighs, but it could be made with boneless breast pieces or even whole chicken cut into 10-12 pieces. I like the thigh meat because it stays extra juicy.

Ingredients for Boiling the chicken: 

Water – 3 cups

Boneless Thigh Chicken – 1 kg or almost 2.5 lbs – cut into 2.5 inches cubes

Onion – 1/2 (if you have a large onion)

Garlic – 3 cloves

Salt – 1.5 Tsp (or to taste)

Cloves – 10

Black peppercorns – 10

Green Chillies – Whole 10

Cinnamon – 1 stick

Ingredients for the WHITE paste for coating: 

1 cup of chicken stock from boiling the chicken

1 cup of milk

1 cup of flour

salt – 1/2 Tsp

Freshly crushed Black Pepper – 1 tsp

Ingredients for the crunchy coating: 

Eggs – 2 (whisked really well and foamy!)

Bread Crumbs – 1 cup (or to coat!)

OIL – for deep frying

Method for BOILING THE CHICKEN: 

Put all the ingredients on a stock pot for boiling the chicken, on the stove, COVER IT and cook for 20-30 minutes until the chicken is cooked thoroughly and the stock is 1 to 1.5 cups left.

Drain the chicken and SAVE THE STOCK up to 1 cup.

METHOD for making the white paste for coating and COATING the chicken:

Bring 1 cup of stock that you saved, back to the stock pot (or you can even take a smaller sauce pan for easy-ness in coating). Now add 1 cup of milk and bring the mixture to a boil. 

As soon as it starts boiling, add the flour gradually while whisking thoroughly so that the lumps don’t form. If the lumps form (which most likely it will), just continue to whisk, while still the mixture being on the stove, so the lumps can disappear and the sauce thickens up very nicely. Remember it should not be runny, it should have a thick consistency. Now add the salt and FRESHLY CRUSHED black pepper (yeah, you must have noticed the freshly crushed part in CAPS, because it is SUPER important! Duh..).

Now its time to coat the WARM chicken, so its important to do it right after boiling the chicken.

TIP 1: The process of making the white paste should take maximum 10 minutes. Do it right after draining the boiled chicken from the stock (and saving the stock). Because the chicken should be pretty warm/hot while coating it with the paste, otherwise the paste will not stick to the chicken pieces.

Keep on coating the chicken pieces and keeping it in a GREASED plate or container in a SINGLE layer, in such a way that no piece touches each other.

Keep the coated chicken pieces in the FRIDGE for at least 2 hours. This will make the white coating stick really well to the pieces.

TIP 2: After the coating, at this stage the chicken can be even frozen (in a single layer!) for up to a month. Just take the chicken out, defrost it in the fridge over night, and do the eggs and bread crumb coating and enjoy.

Final COATING: Just take the chicken and dip it in the whisked eggs first, and then in the bread crumbs, coat it nicely and then fry it in hot oil.

Fry till it becomes nicely golden brown, Serve with Fries and a Veggie side and ENJOY THE HECK OUT OF IT!