Fried Chicken LudoBird Style

We learned to make chef Ludo Lefebvre’s insanely delicious fried chicken by watching his IGTV live cooking show — an Instagram video series we highly recommend. If you’re not familiar with chef Lefebvre, you’re probably not from Los Angeles, where his restaurants Trois Mec and Petit Trois sit atop the city’s French food chain. This recipe brings home (wherever home is) the “buttermilk provençal” fried chicken Lefebvre sells at his two LudoBird fried chicken spots. (On the chef’s IGTV channel, you’ll also find his demystifying demos of chocolate soufflé, steak au poivre with frites and other French classics.)

Recipe notes

We attribute our mad success with this recipe — which treated us to one of the best fried chicken experiences of our lives — mostly to Lefebvre’s excellent demo, but also to near-constant monitoring of the oil temperature using a deep-fry thermometer. (DO NOT under any circumstances do what Lefebvre does in the video and winkingly suggests in his Instagram post — sticking his finger in the oil to test the temp.) Piling on its sheer deliciousness, the chicken has incredible texture — ours was juicy and moist inside and super-crisp and crunchy on the outside; the breading is super shaggy, and fries up beautifully. Herbes de Provence gives the bird an unexpected French flavor — the American South meets the South of France. If you want to skew it more American Southern, you can simply skip the dried herbs.

What to serve with it? Pickled Shrimp would be lovely to nibble as the chicken’s frying. With the chicken, Classic Mac and Cheese would be perfect; so would the Best Potato Salad Ever.

Thinking about something greener? Sautéed Greens would be lovely; so would Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta.

All of these can be made in advance (reheat the mac and cheese, greens or Brussels sprouts).

In advance: Brine the chicken the day ahead. Just before frying, set up three stations: one for plain flour, the next for buttermilk and the third for a seasoned-flour breading mixture. You’ll need a large Dutch oven (with tall sides) or a large heavy pot for frying, a sheet pan fitted with a rack (or lined with paper towels) for draining the fried pieces, and again, a deep-frying thermometer.

It’s important not to crowd the pan. For an explanation of why — along with thoughts on cooking time, reusing oil and more, see “More Recipe Notes” following the instructions.

Makes 8 pieces of fried chicken.

Ingredients

For the brine:

2 lemons, each cut in half

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1/4 cup honey

2 sprigs fresh thyme

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons black peppercorns

1 small head of garlic, cloves smashed but not peeled

4 tablespoons kosher salt

2 or 3 bay leaves

1 chicken cut into 8 pieces (2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 breasts each cut in half; stash the wings and carcass in a zipper bag in the freezer and use them later for a stock)

For the fried chicken:

4 cups all-purpose flour (divided)

1 1/2 tablespoons garlic powder

1 1/2 tablespoons onion powder

2 1/2 teaspoons paprika (sweet or smoked)

3 tablespoons fine sea salt

1 tablespoon + 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

4 tablespoons herbes de Provence (divided)

2 cups buttermilk (full-fat or low-fat; divided)

An ungodly amount of grape-seed oil or canola oil for frying

Instructions

1. The day or evening before you’re going to fry the chicken, brine it. Place 6 cups water in a medium-large saucepan. Squeeze the lemon halves into it, and drop in the lemon peels. Add the vinegar, honey, thyme and rosemary sprigs, peppercorns, garlic, salt and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.

2. Strain the brine into a vessel large enough to hold the chicken, and add 3 cups ice water. When the brine cools to room temperature, add the chicken pieces. Cover and chill overnight in the fridge.

3. An hour before you’re going to fry the chicken, remove the chicken from the brine (discarding the brine) and let the chicken pieces come to room temperature.

4. Make the breading mixture: Place 3 cups of the flour in a medium bowl, along with the garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, sea salt, baking powder and 2 tablespoons of the herbes de Provence. Whisk to combine thoroughly. Drizzle in 1/4 cup of the buttermilk, and use your fingers to distribute the liquid through the flour mixture, rubbing your fingers together, to give the breading mix a lumpy texture. Transfer the mixture to a flat-bottomed baking pan or other flat-bottomed rectangular or square vessel.

5. Fill a Dutch oven (with tall sides) or other deep heavy pot no more than halfway up with the grape-seed or canola oil and heat the oil over high heat to a temperature of 325 degrees. Once it hits that temperature, regulate the heat to keep it thereabouts until you’re ready to fry. At all times you’ll want the oil to be between 325 to 350 degrees.

6. While the oil is heating, set up your dredging stations: On the left, place a shallow bowl, plate or dish containing the remaining cup of flour. Pour the remaining buttermilk into a bowl and place that in the middle. Place the flat vessel containing the seasoned breading mixture on the right.

7. Dredge two pieces of chicken: Dip one in the plain flour, and shake it off, then submerge it in the buttermilk (turning it over if necessary to moisten it completely), then lay it in the breading mixture. Heap the breading mixture onto the chicken piece, pressing it in hard with the palm of your hand, to completely cover it with as much of the mixture as possible, and pressed into the chicken as hard as possible. It should look very shaggy, with as much of the mixture stuck to the chicken as possible. Repeat with the second piece.

8. Turn up the heat a bit and raise the oil temperature in the pot to 340 to 350 degrees (do not let it go over 350). Once it reaches that temperature, immediately add the two pieces of chicken. Fry them till they are deep golden brown, which can take anywhere from 5 to 12 minutes per piece, depending on how hot the oil is. After two or three minutes, use a wooden spoon or tongs to gently turn over the pieces. Check the oil temperature several times during the cooking, regulating the heat so that the oil is always between 325 degrees and 350 degrees. Once the chicken pieces are fried-chicken color, which could be anywhere from 5 to 12 minutes (see further explanation of timing in More Recipe Notes following the recipe), remove them from the oil and lay them on the rack or paper-towel-lined baking sheet to drain. Sprinkle each piece with some of the remaining herbes de Provence.

9. Dredge the next to chicken pieces, regulate the oil temperature to 340 to 350 degrees and repeat the frying-then-sprinkling with herbs process until all the chicken is fried. Serve immediately.

More recipe notes

• Is brining necessary? In the video, Lefebvre says you don’t absolutely need to brine the bird (which requires day-in-advance prep), but that’s not a step we’d skip, as we felt the brining had much to do with the chicken’s preternaturally flavorful and juicy disposition.

• Why no skin and no wings? We were stunned during the broadcast that the chef took the skin off the chicken pieces and didn’t fry the wings (which he set aside for broth with the carcass), but he was right; we fried the wings and they weren’t as delightful as the rest.

• Tweaks from the original recipe: Lefebvre used 4 lemons for the brine, which felt unnecessarily luxurious to us; we swapped two of them for white vinegar, and cut back a bit on the honey in the brine. For the breading, we scaled down the recipe by one quarter, so we wouldn’t waste precious flour (which we took from 4 cups down to 3 cups, adjusting the other ingredient amounts accordingly); that provided sufficient dredge-mixture to coat the bird generously. (We did not proportionally reduce the amount of herbes de Provence, as the chef seemed to use quite a bit more in the video than his recipe calls for.) Similarly, the original recipe calls for 4 cups buttermilk for dunking the pieces and adding a few spoonfuls to the dredge; 2 cups is more than sufficient.

• How long to cook each piece: Every chef and every cookbook author seems to have a different idea about this. Lefebvre suggested about 12 minutes for a thigh and 10 minutes for a breast; we found that to be too long; for the thigh, the breading was already dark and crisp and the internal temperature was 180 degrees a few minutes before that. We found that if you fry until you’re happy with the color of the breading — making it a deep-golden brown (you know, fried-chicken color!) — it will be cooked comfortably more than the required internal temperature of 165 degrees F. Therefore, go ahead and let your eyeballs be the judge of doneness.

• Why it’s important not to crowd the pan: Each time you drop chicken pieces in the oil, it reduces the oil temperature, which you don’t want to drop below 325 degrees. Therefore we found it best to fry no more than two pieces at a time.

• Keeping the chicken warm: As Lefebvre says in his video, they stay pretty hot for a long time on a wire rack, but if you’re nervous about them staying warm enough, you can place the baking sheet and rack in a 225 degree oven to keep them warm while you finish frying.

• Re-using oil: After you’ve eaten, if you’ll be re-using your oil, carefully strain it — preferably through a sieve lined with cheesecloth — into a clean, dry container. If it is at all dark, or if there are off-smells, discard it. If it is clean, store it in a covered container in the refrigerator. This article from Epicurious explains re-use pretty thoroughly.