OK! Jelly and cola. The Strawberry jam is an addition which the most popular K*F*C* restaurant in Los Angeles has listed on their sauce ingredient list. I thought it really strange at first reading - also I do not like strawberry jam. The ingredient list also has "soda pop". I thought about the mix of flavours and came up with cola. I must admit I do not use P*ep*si or Co*ke because of the HFCS. I purchase cola from Whole Foods which is made with cane sugar. I have grape jam on my "must try in this recipe" list. This recipe is a sweet/hot/savory recipe so the jam and cola contrubite to the sweet and take some of the blazing heat away from the Korean Red Pepper Paste. For substitutions I would say the jam could be replaced with ketchup or plain tomato paste. You could try pure apple juice in place of the cola. It is my intention to make this with frozen pineapple juice concentrate in place of the strawberry jam. I hope that by summer I will have 3 variations - all will be hot & spicy. For another variation I will try using a sweet southern style BBQ sauce with added garlic and sesame oil on this crispy cooked chicken. However you make it be sure to double fry because this is how you get that c r u n c h!! Now I am working on a Korean Fried Shrimp - must use JUMBO shrimp because must double fry. DL

A lot of folks flying around the airport but no one is landing. No dispute on the basic facts of what temperatures certain substances (water, oil) vaporize or explode. But no one is accounting for the dynamics of the process, which are explained in Colonel Sanders patent that he took out on his pressure frying method for cooking chicken (U.S. Patent No. 3,245,800). What happens when you apply heat to a mixture of liquids having different boiling temperatures in a closed environment with a small orifice vent (i.e., a stovetop pressure cooker)? What happens when you distill a mixture of liquids having different boiling points? Here's what happens. Assuming you are applying enough heat to the liquid mixture to reach the boiling points, each liquid will boil off in order of their boiling points, lowest first to highest last. More importantly, the temperature of the entire mixture of boiling liquids and vapors within the closed environment will remain at the equilibrium temperature of the lowest boiling liquid until ALL of the lowest boiling liquid is vaporized out of the system. At that point the temperature of the enclosed liquid and vapor system will begin to rise until it reaches the equilibrium boiling point for the next-highest boiling liquid. In our chicken frying example, the two most important liquids are the water contained in the chicken and its coating, and the frying oil. Water boils at 212 F at atmospheric temperature, and at about 250 F at 15 psi, the pressure used by Colonel Sanders with his old Mirro pressure cookers. Oil boils at some ungodly high temperature, one obviously dangerous, but one that will never be reached in the pressure cooker unless and until ALL of the water in the chicken and its coating are vaporized and vented out the pressure cooker's vent. But in order to vaporize all of the water in the chicken, you will have to cook it for a good bit longer than the eight to ten minutes the Colonel used to cook his chicken. As long as there is any water remaining in the chicken (and with the cooking times involved here, there always will be), that water will continuously vaporize out of the chicken and maintain the pressure cooker at 250 F and 15 PSI. The danger comes in when the process is neglected. If the heat is left on long enough, and all the water is driven out of the chicken and vented to the atmosphere, the temperature inside the pressure cooker will begin to rise until it reaches the equilibrium boiling point of the next-highest boiling liquid, the oil, at 15 PSI. If that happens, look out. It is because of the possibility of neglect leading to the complete evacuation of water from the cooker that the stovetop pressure cooker manufacturers have uniformly regarded pressure frying in their equipment as unsafe. Bottom line - it is possible to pressure fry chicken in a stovetop pressure cooker, but the process has to be controlled and monitored carefully so that you never approach the point where all of the water is removed from the chicken (the chicken would be long past ruined by that point anyway). The safety of the process depends entirely on the operator. If there is any question of whether the chef has sufficient skill and attention span to monitor and control the process (and for the pressure cooker manufacturers, they just cannot presume that all their customers do), it's just much safer to use a purpose-made pressure fryer, expensive as they are.

Since I first posted that, I've made that recipe a few dozen times. Observations: 1. I find I hardly ever bother with the sauce. The thighs are plenty good on their own. 2. While it's tasty with just salt & pepper, you can use whatever herb or spice you want. Chipotle powder is good, as is the Penzey spice mixture 'Arizona Dreaming'. 3. If after 18 minutes the flesh side doesn't look quite done, it's okay to flip the thighs and cook the flesh side for a minute or two. 4. What's really nice is that if you haven't planned for a dinner, you can stop on the way home from work and pick up as many chicken thighs as you want, and have 'fried' chicken in under a half hour. I wouldn't try it with any other cut but a thigh; the thigh flattens out nicely in the pan when you make those flesh cuts parallel to the bone. What you're doing, from a food-science-geek perspective, is rendering the skin fat and frying the skin side in that fat, while the vapors in the covered skillet are steaming the flesh side.

Here it is. Easy Oven-Fried Chicken 3 tablespoons mayonnaise 3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan 2 teaspoons minced fresh parsley chipotle powder or curry powder to taste salt & pepper about a cup of Panko bread crumbs 4 thighs or breasts Combine mayo, Parmesan, parsley, chipotle or curry powder, salt & pepper. Coat thighs with mix, then roll in Panko. Coat a sheet pan with a couple tablespoons vegetable oil. Place thighs on pan and bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I’ve also done it using just mustard and Panko. Honeycup mustard Panko thighs or breasts Coat chicken with Honeycup, then roll in Panko. Coat sheet pan with 2 tablespoons vegetable oil. Place chicken on pan and bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes.