If you’re a meat-eater, fried chicken is one of those unquestionably delicious foods. There’s some magical quality to the combination of juicy chicken and crispy crunchy fried coating, the mere mention of which sets off cravings.
Most of us don’t need to think much further than that – we just know we want to eat it. But what exactly is it about this dish that makes it so enticing?
There’s more to the appeal of the humble fried chicken than you might think: from the chemistry of frying to a deep-seated evolutionary response to the dish’s basic nutritional components. We’re diving in a little deeper, with help from Professor Russell Keast – Director of CASS Food Research Centre, Deakin University, whose research focuses on the taste system and its relationship to dietary consumption. Read on to find out what’s going on with fried chicken, and why we just can’t seem to get enough.
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For a good fry, push the temperature high
Texture is a massive reason why fried chicken works. There’s more than one way to fry a chicken, but for the results we crave, it has to be deep-fried – which means having enough fat in the fryer to fully suspend the chicken. “Obviously frying is usually done at a high-ish temperature, so 160 to 180 degrees, if we’re talking a deep-fryer,” says Professor Keast. At these temperatures, the oil is “cooking the proteins and creating flavour with the interactions between protein and starch, where you’re getting the caramelisation, or things called ‘Maillard products’” – a result of the Maillard reaction, which creates browning and depth of flavour.
“You’re also removing moisture,” says Prof Keast. “So anything above 100 degrees, you’re pushing the moisture out, and this creates things like the crunchy textures we associate with fried foods.”
It’s all about that crunch
Done properly, deep-frying creates a satisfying contrast between the crispy-crunchy coating and tender chicken. Beyond that simple textural enjoyment, the crispness actually sends our brain a message that the food itself is in good condition.
“We’ll associate that crunch or the crispness… with things like freshness,” says Prof Keast. “If we think about another processed-type food like a potato chip, you bite into a potato chip, it’s crisp, you’re getting that sound coming through it. It comes through the jaw bones, vibrates to the ear. So it’s actually a physical process during mastication that’s creating the sound that reverberates on the jaw bones and takes it to the ear. So it’s not just what we’re hearing through our ear, it’s actually transmitted through the jaw to create the sound and the impression that we’re getting from the food.
“So you have a potato chip that’s not quite crisp, that’s a little bit soggy – all of a sudden our quality experience of that food is greatly decreased.”
Salt, fat, and millions of years of practice
Cast yourself back a few hundred million years to a hot, humid world in which our ancestors were yet to experience the simple pleasures of ready-made food. Basic elements of nutrition such as salt and fat – so readily available now – were often in short supply in the natural world, and that influenced our modern appetite.
“We don’t have great bodily stores of sodium, so we needed to replenish it,” says Prof Keast. “We needed a response that told us if we came across something with [...] physiologically relevant levels of sodium in it, to consume that. So what we now term our ‘hedonic response’, or our liking – that’s the key thing which is associated with it.”
Combine this with a similar evolutionary response to fat, and you can see how our love for these foods became ingrained. “When we come across these combinations of salt and fat [...] our brains are going, ‘This is brilliant’, our evolutionary brains are going, ‘This is fantastic, I’m getting these things which are absolutely essential to me’. Hence the liking of these foods and the drive to consume them.”
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Red Rooster. Red Rooster’s new Crunchy Fried Chicken is fresh (not frozen), 100% premium Australian chicken. Currently available in selected restaurants only but coming to a Red Rooster near you in 2021.
Produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Red Rooster.Learn more about partner content on Broadsheet.
