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A large part of fried chicken’s allure is the contrast between a juicy and tender interior and shatteringly crispy skin. While the standard dredging station is a flour-egg-wash-breadcrumb trio, you should swap the breadcrumbs with saltine crackers for the crispiest crust.
A comforting, stomach-settling staple in most of our pantries, saltine crackers are perfectly salty, toasty, and savory with a super crunchy, dry texture that’ll hold up well under deep-fried oil. They contain baking soda, which allows for extra crispness, and they’ll turn a beautiful golden brown in the fryer. Plus, you’re more likely to have them on hand for snacking, so they’re the convenient bread crumb swap for an impromptu fried chicken dinner decision.
It’s easy enough to convert them into breadcrumbs by placing a sleeve or two in a plastic bag and beating them with a rolling pin. You can also throw a bunch of saltines into a food processor with all kinds of seasonings and blitz them for an even quicker preparation. No matter how you break them down, they offer a more varied texture than the uniformly fine breadcrumbs, with larger cracker bits providing an even better pop of crunch. You can also make a half-and-half mixture of saltines and bread crumbs, or saltines and potato chips for an even more interesting taste and texture.
More ideas for cracker-crusted fried chicken
We have plenty of fried chicken recipes you can apply the saltine hack to, starting with this classic buttermilk fried chicken. With a buttermilk marinade, you don’t have to use an egg-wash coating to adhere the dry dredge. Buttermilk is a multi-faceted ingredient that tenderizes, flavors, and binds. So, all you have to do is remove the chicken from the buttermilk and place them directly into the flour, or in this case, the crushed saltines.
The same easy swap applies to this recipe for spicy buttermilk fried chicken. The only difference is that you’d be nearly doubling the volume of the dry Saltine and spice mixture because this recipe calls for double-dipping the chicken for a thicker crust. You could also use Saltine crackers to bread a fried chicken cutlet, chicken fried steak, or chicken tender recipe. This recipe for the crispiest chicken cutlet employs a more traditional flour-egg-bread crumb formula. So you’d just swap the breadcrumbs for crushed Saltines.
With a traditional dry-wet-dry dredging, pat the raw chicken dry before passing it through each station to prevent the crust from sliding off the chicken as it fries. You can also get creative with seasonings for the saltine crust. For example, if you’re using a buttermilk marinated recipe like these chicken tenders, you can add a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning to the saltine crumbs. This enhances the tanginess of the buttermilk with an aromatic and herbal complement.
