Oh, god! Ah! Oh. I need to cool it down. Every chef knows there are unbreakable rules in the kitchen, but what happens when you actually break those rules? Do the fried chicken gods rain fiery vengeance upon you and your family, or are they just arbitrary myths peddled from chef to chef just waiting to be busted? To find out, we’ve assembled a highly trained team of serious culinary professionals to put them to the test. Wait, wait, wait, wait. We’re cooking what? Because this is- Bagawk! Myth Munchers! Ready to bust fried chicken myths again? Yeah! But first, we have a brand new product out to fans, it’s very fantastic, this is the Mythical Kitchen Online University, we have a brief sample of our course catalog right here. Of course, I am president, my word is law. You might be wondering, how much does this cost? $100,000 with a very legitimate degree. That is, I think, an absolute reasonable price. Campus, we’re more of a BYOC situation here, bring your own, so that. We got our security guards right here, so you can feel safe on the campus. Courses include “Playing with Fire and Trevor,” Trevor is not the teacher of the course per say, but he is sort of one of the props that gets lit on fire. We have “Spice World: A Comprehensive Look at Tony Chachere,” all about the biography of his life. “The Physics of the Palm Heel Strike,” and then Nicole’s class, which I think you’re really gonna be excited about, this is “Fight for Your Right to Food Fight to be Right Debate with Nicole.” Yeah! Wow! Sign me up! Wow, that’s good stuff. Hot diggity damn. All right, so, there were a lot of fried chicken myths that we didn’t get to in the original video, right? But now we’re testing more myths. We’re gonna see what the best batter is, do you do whole egg, do you do egg white? My personal favorite, water, which is a TikTok trend, used a lot in Southeast Asian cookery, or do we stick with buttermilk? Do you actually have to fry your chicken in batches? Crazy. We’re gonna see what happens when you actually overcrowd a pot of hot oil, and it will not be dangerous. Then we’re gonna see what the best frying oil is, is it something that we did not get into? Peanut oil, the OG that we use, my personal favorite, but what about Crisco? Lot of big southern tradition here, and you can’t test that without lard. Farmer John? Hot dang. And then, of course, we’re gonna see what the best starch to actually coat your fried chicken is. We got AP flour, and then we’re gonna be cutting that with half corn starch, rice flour, and potato starch. We’re gonna get into it. Remember how sick we felt after the first fried chicken myths video? Yeah! Let’s do it again! Yeah! Woo! Let’s do it again! All right. Everyone write down your guesses. Here, take a card, take a card, there’s actually a discount code for Mythical Kitchen Online U, you guys can all take it as well. Loser of today’s episode has to do the chicken dance on camera but actually feel it. The way that Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, you could really feel their chemistry in the original “Step Up,” I want you to feel that within yourself for the chicken dance. Okay. Okay. Okay, beautiful. Let’s do it. Trevor, time is a flat circle, everything we’ve ever done, we’re just gonna do again, buddy. We’re back. Yeah. We’re back in the saddle, we’re testing more fried chicken myths, and right now we’re testing the actual wet dredge that goes into the flour. Woo! ‘Cause last time, we did this originally, and it was a little crazy, right? We just did butt milk last time, right? And, we did that because, I don’t know, we have, people buttermilk brine, they often leave it in that, but most recipes actually call for whole egg here. However, I got this crazy theory, I got a lot of theories, don’t ask me about the E. coli outbreaks at Chipotle, dark forces behind it, but my theory is that egg whites are actually… My personal theory is that egg whites are actually the best thing to dredge fried chicken in, and there’s a lot of reasons why, right? Buttermilk has too much sugar in it, it’s got, great job on that position. Buttermilk has too much sugar in it, so when you add it to the oil, it actually gets dark, right? Whole egg to me has too much fat in it, fat is something that can prevent crispiness from happening. Egg white, though, is almost pure protein, anybody who’s been on a bodybuilding.com forum can tell you that, so to me, that’s gonna get the cleanest crispiness. But, water… That’s what I wet dredge myself in, am I right? I don’t get it. It’s like bathing, you obviously don’t get it. I bathe, I just don’t wash my legs. The soap runs down on my legs. Water has been a trend on TikTok that we’ve been seeing, and I think what it does is actually mimics a bit of a wet batter, ’cause it kinda just turns into a sludge with the flour. Some people think that’s better, we’re gonna try it. You ready to get to dredging? Yeah! Yeah! You ready to watch “Step Up 3D”? 3D? They did a 3D one. All right, let’s start doing. So, the chicken, we got this, this has been dry brining overnight, in Tony Cachere’s, we’re gonna get it into the flour, and then we’re gonna get it into our wets, and then we’re going back to the dries, Trevor… Check this out. Doo do doo do do do. Get it, ’cause they’re drums. Was that Rush? No. Phil Collins. Oh! You’re right. Well here’s the thing, I oftentimes in these episodes don’t go based on any real thoughts. I don’t put any thought, it’s like vibes for me. You’re less thoughts, more vibes. Yeah, more vibes. I’m a vibe guy. You know me. I’ve said that I’m in my post-intellectual bimbo era, and I fully believe that for myself. And I’m absolutely here for it. Life is so much more fun when you don’t think. You got a nice wet hand dry hand going? ‘Cause me too. Yeah… You’re making biscuits on your fingers, man! Put them in an air fry, suck ’em off. No, I’m a fool. I’m a fool, I’m a fool! Trevor, what have you done? Shut it! Our scientific, every single time we do this, we rely on the scientific process, Trevor, to be consistent. Just cut around it. Can we cut around it? Post, Taylor! Can we cut around it? And from the original busting fried chicken myths, we did learn that double dredging is the way to go, so we’re following the same exact things, and now we’re actually going to let these rest for an hour, we found out that that was better. Then we’re gonna get to frying. Trevor, you gotta eat that, man. No waste of calories here, buddy. I don’t wanna. Could I have it? Trevor, the chickens have been dredged. Yes, and rested. And rested for one hour. And since we are good scientists, we will now observe our experiment. It is actually kinda, there’s some noticeable differences. Like especially on the water, I feel like it looks a lot less craggy. These ones look a little bit chunkier. I think it’s because the rate that the water just absorbs flour, right? It doesn’t let it sit, there’s no time release on it, you’re just getting pure sludge in there, man. This is like a perfect spear, which I don’t think I want, but the proof is gonna be right in the… Chicken? Chicken. That doesn’t work. Can we take that back? Can we go back to the beginning? All right, I’m going whole egg first, gonna do a little swiggity swooty looking at booty. I’m going bootermilk. Bootermilk. And oil, we’re rocking somewhere between 330 and 350 in peanut oil right here, this is what we did in the original. Anytime you drop chicken into a cast iron, a small amount of oil, it’s gonna drop the temperature a little bit. But not like us. Just like I’m dropping into this lunge here. Gotta work on the glutes. Drop it like it’s hot. Beach season, baby. Trevor, the chickens are cooked. Will you do the ceremonial blessing of the Tony Chachere’s? Please. Join me. Amen. And we got a new addition, we got the Tony Chachere’s hot sauce officially. Any visual differences here, that we’re seeing? Yeah, a lot. Look at that bald-ass water one. Yeah, this looks like a killer whale. Or orca. Why’s it look like an orca, what do you mean? ‘Cause they’re smooth. I guess. I think porpoises are smooth. Anyways, water, right, it’s thinner, so you’re just literally getting less flour absorbed, whereas you look at like the egg white, see those nice big crags here, it’s a little bit bald, I don’t know if I love that. Buttermilk, sugar content burns in the fryer, that’s why you’re seeing a lot of that darkening right there which might be good, Maillard reaction, yada yada, you’ve heard the science, we ain’t no damn Alton Brown up in here. Whole egg, probably most similar to egg white, right? See, this looks like, I mean, I don’t know what they’re doing at the Popeye’s, but that specific, like, if you took just a small little square there, and you asked me to guess which fast food chain this chicken was from, I’d say Popeye’s. Well at Popeye’s, the employees were trained like special forces units to stop people from fighting over the chicken sandwiches in the parking lot. So they’re doing a lot in there. Do you remember that? Why am I making such 2019-ass references right now? That’s when I peaked. Okay, what do you try first? Buttermilk. Buttermilk! Buttermilk. Buttermilk, oh god, I do love fried chicken. I’m gonna, no, I’m gonna wait to hot sauce it. Do you think this is gonna be hot? I don’t care. Okay. Oh! God! Oh, god, that’s good. Ooh! Hah! Oh, oh! Oh! Okay, okay. It’s wet. Num. You don’t have to say yes. There you go. As far as buttermilk goes, I don’t mind the extra browning on it, that’s kinda just good, you don’t get that burnt caramelized sugar taste. I do think, though, the batter’s a little bit not as crispy, it’s a little bit hard, a little bit chewy, you’re getting a little dough ball there. Getting a little bit of doughiness inside. Buttermilk is really thick, but again, it doesn’t have protein in it, so it’s sort of not seizing up. When you cook proteins, it seizes up. Man, buttermilk just might be too wet, too thick. We’ll see. Water. I’m gonna be so pissed off if this wins. I’m gonna, oh my god. I’m gonna Russian judge the hell outta this. Okay. All right. Oh, damn. Oh, dammit, that’s pretty good. That is very crispy. Hold the hell on! It’s papery thin, but it’s very crispy. It is, no, and that’s literally, so water, anytime you add water to a recipe, if you add heat to that, water evaporates, right? And so literally, you’re getting more moisture, and it’s coming almost to a wet batter consistency on it, but I guess it makes sense. And if you like a lighter batter crispy chicken, that’s probably pretty good for you. Egg white, now this is America. You see this? This is just a big old dough ball on the end of the chicken. That is gonna crunch so hard, and I’m so excited. I’m ready. Oh, yeah! Oh, god. She’s a squirter. Oh, god! Ah! Wow. I need to cool it down. Whole egg might be similar, but it does look… Like you can feel that it’s soggier. Lemme feel that it’s soggier compared to this. Mm. Oh, god. Oh, it’s so good. I cannot express to you enough though, how freaking good all these are when it comes down to it. Holy juice! Holy juice, Batman! It’s coming right off here! Sorry, that was not even good. That wasn’t even like a good bit. That was bad. Can we go back to the beginning of this episode? We’ll leave that in. Again, all these are really good. Water was a surprise, pretty good change of pace experience, but quintessential Southern American fried chicken. We’re going egg white. Mm-hm. You know what that means, Trevor. What is that? That means this myth has been munched! Oh, I’ve been munching. Oh, the juice. Lily! This is our first time together! And we would be bonding over fried chicken, ’cause we just make so much of it. I’m so excited to eat fried chicken with you. Here and there, here and there. Okay, so we are testing the myth that you should fry your fried chicken in batches versus overcrowding the pan, because you want your fried chicken to basically brown evenly, right? Yes, and I think that the, when you add the chicken in crowds, the oil will drop in temperature, and it might just absorb the oil rather than crisping it properly. So, let’s see how this goes. All right, so we can go ahead and drop our drums in there. How much fried chicken do you really cook, Lily? I actually made some the other day. Uh-huh. When? Oh, for your mans. You made some on the TikTok. I made some on the TikTok. I did see that. I have 40 followers. Follow me on TikTok. So proud of you. You’re gonna get like three more after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we started at 350 degrees. This is already dropped down to 300 degrees. And where we at on this side? We’re at 330. So this has dropped in temperature quite a bit. But we’re gonna scoot over and stay warm in the jacuzzi. Yes, in the jacuzzi. So we’re gonna go ahead and let these cook in the oil, fry ’em up, and we will be right back. See ya. Vi, we made fried chicken. Yes we did. We have our crowding and we have our batches. Let’s look at the visual differences. They look really similar, honestly. They do look similar, we used the egg white winner, but this, like you can see right here that it’s missing a craggly bit, and I think it’s ’cause they were rubbing against each other and were touching, so. Basically cuddling in there. Yeah, they were cuddling, and their parts were falling off of each other, so. Yeah. They must be on “Love Island.” Also, I noticed that you pulled these like two minutes earlier than these ones. Yeah, I sure did. It almost felt like this was cooking a little bit slower, though, and this one was cooking a little bit faster, but… Maybe they were like warming each other up or something. Maybe. All right, which one do you wanna try first? Let’s do crowding. Okay. Wait, do we put Tony C’s on it? Do we put a little Tony C’s on it? Okay, yeah, I’m just putting it on here. I’m gonna start coughing. Oh, that’s so good. Okay, thank you so much. It doesn’t look like I put anything on there, but I promise you I did, okay? Oh god, it’s so hot. Yeah. Oh! Ooh. I can’t eat it. But, it’s good fried chicken. Yeah. It’s tasty, it’s juicy, it’s nice. This one? Mm-hm. Hot! I can’t… I’m gonna cry. If you’re in a pinch, yeah, these took two minutes longer to cook, but you have two more drums. And these each took around 14 minutes to cook. So… I think it might be for the crowding. Yeah, like I’m trying to save time. I don’t have all day, and like… As long as you don’t make two layers of chicken, like you just have ’em all evenly just flat in the pan, then you’ll be good. You can still make it work. Yeah, don’t put like 20 in a pan, but if you’re doubling the amount, depending on the size of your pan. We’ve come to a decision that you should crowd your pan, and it works just as fine as batches, so, this myth has been munched! This myth has been munched! Ah, we’re gonna talk about that big old fatty fatty boombalatty right here. What fat do you fry your chicken in? We have been going peanut oil for a while. To me, I’ve always thought of it as the cleanest flavor, and if you want the Tony Chachere’s to really shine, then you put it in the cleanest flavor oil. Peanut oil, pretty high smoke point, rocking up above 400. But, what if I told you there’s a lot of people out there… That think you should be using Crisco. Now Crisco, it’s like lard, but it’s made from vegetables. ‘Kay. Right? So it’s fully hydrogenated palm oil. You combine liquid fat with hydrogen molecules, hydrogen bonds of course, very strong, that turns your fat from unsaturated to saturated, but not necessarily trans fats, that comes from partially hydrogenated oils. So this is gonna have a longer shelf life, you’re gonna reduce the oxidative properties of liquid oil, Trevor, holy crap. In the finished product, there’s a chance that this lays heavy on it because when it cools down, it resolidifies. Okay. But, some say it’ll actually give a more even fry. And then we got lard. Trevor, tell ’em about lard. Lard, well, it comes from Farmer John. And what he does is he goes to the lard tree, and he peels off a piece of bark, and he sticks the spigot in, and then he turns the thing and then out pours the lard, and he collects it into a little bucket, and then he goes to his home, and he takes it and he starts caressing it and shaping it into this little rectangle. And he puts his love into it. And that’s how you get lard. How does he put his love into it? Describe it in detail process here. So lard used to be a really important source of, I’m giving a history lesson, let’s just lean into it. Lard used to be a really important source of fuel and other things, but then the drop in demand for lard actually changed and between 1950 and 1970, pigs were actually bred to have about 50% less lard, leading to leaner breeds of Yorkshires in America, and also the “Pork. The Other White Meat” campaign, to market pork as healthy. Not even listening. The kids these days, they have so much ADHD ’cause they’re always on their phones, they’re scrolling through their little tikky tokkies, there’s no culture. Anyways, Trevor, we’re back, don’t stop. What are you doing? Are you playing, is that…? Geometry Dash. Is that Flappy Bird? Geometry Dash. What is Geometry Dash? It’s a good game. You made me die. Give him a sugar cube so he can stay focused. Trevor, we’re normal men. We’re innocent men. We’re innocent men, and we have six chicken drumsticks in front of us, two that have been fried in peanut oil, two in Crisco, two in lard. If we look at ’em, we fried ’em for the same amount of time, at the same heat, pulled ’em the same, peanut got a little bit darker, maybe because it has a slightly lower smoke point than the others, but honestly, we might have just fried it a lot. We’re not perfect, I know you think of us as perfect, classically trained technical chefs who are very serious. All right, we’re gonna dust it with a little Tony Chachere’s. “Dust it.” Get a light dusting on there. What? Let’s dig in. What do you think’s gonna happen? It looks like worst to best. Tony Chachere’s got in the lungs. Let’s start with lard. We’ll start with lard, give it a smell. All right, let’s dig in. L’chaim. There’s a cooking term that not a lot of people recognize, but I do, called pig stink. There’s like a pig stink, it’s the reason that in a lot of Chinese dishes, you blanche your pork before you braise it. ‘Cause it gets rid of the pig stink, and lard just pure pig stink. Yep. Yeah, Crisco. Crisco. Feels similar. Maybe a little bit crispier, I think the lard did get a little sog. Yeah. Let’s dive in. This is great. Just lovely. No complaints. Suck in through your mouth. Go phew. Wait no, lemme do it like The Weeknd in “The Idol.” Suck in through your mouth. Mm-mm. Nope. I hate both of those. This better be good. This better be good. Feel it. Yeah. Feel it. Stop! What? I haven’t even seen the show, I’ve just seen screenshots. Oh my god, don’t watch it. Please, for the love of god. Okay. Yeah! That’s a walk-off. That’s a walk-off! Frick yeah! Peanut oil is a clear, clear, clear winner in this, and Trevor, you know what that means. This myth munched us. Myth Munchers. Yeah. Yeah. How you feeling? I feel full. Yeah, greasy. You’ve been eating the chicken off-camera, too, right? Yeah. Same. Can’t stop myself. Well, we are finally at the terminus, we have reached the end. Now we got the final myth here, this is like what should you actually dredge your chicken in, what kind of starch are we using? Typical American Southern fried chicken, most use the AP flour. If you, say, go to the Panda Express, actually, a lot in, you know, Chinese Chinese cooking as well, they’re dredging it with corn starch. Korean fried chicken uses a lot of rice flour, and also potato starch generally. So we’ve taken AP flour and then cut that with corn starch, rice flour, potato starch, ’cause we’ve used pure potato starch in the past, and it does not taste good. But, are there things you can cut your flour with to make it better? Which one do you wanna eat first, man? Original. Yeah, oh, yeah, Trevor, please. And can you do the chant this time? The Tony Chachere’s chant? Okay. Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony! That is the invocation. Now we’re blessed. Everyone grab a chicken. Last one. Last chicken of the road. That’s not the last one. It’s like the fourth. Last four. God. Chickens unite. You guys ever see the bit in “The Simpsons” where Homer goes to Hell and the devil’s force feeding him donuts, and he just can’t stop eating the donuts? Gluttony. Tastes like the backyard at my aunty’s house. Oh, this is so good. Thank you all for doing this, and cooking with me, you know. This is good. All right, let’s try with corn starch. I don’t think anything’s gonna beat AP flour, that’s my official diagnosis. Really? I am a doctor. You never know. Corn starch looks really good. So a benefit about corn starch, corn starch absorbs liquid I think even better than AP flour. You can see it’s more powdery, right? AP flour’s a little bit coarser, there’s no gluten in it, and so you’re also gonna get a finer coating. I don’t know, though. I feel like, it’s like a heavier crunch, but it’s still really crunchy. Hold the phone! Now I wanna go back. Which one’s mine? This one’s mine. You can have a bite of it, though. Bite all of ’em. Just bite one of each. We’ve shared so many germs with each other. It does not matter at this point. I don’t know, we gotta taste other ones, still. Taste the other ones, okay. Everybody remember your chickens. In my pocket. Mine’s at the bottom. Annaliese, not now. It looks like you have the little mariachi sticks in there. Ooh, makes me warm down there. Oh, that’s sick. This is… It looks reddish. It’s definitely a different color. Looks like something happened to it. Something happened to it in the fryer. The rice flour’s super dark, I’m thinking maybe rice flour has more natural sugar in it, if that’s the case. But I feel like I’ve struggled to get browning in rice flour. My teeth don’t wanna bite it. I know. Oh, god! Fudge! Okay, okay, okay. Well this is here, we’re going back. I’ve eliminated rice flour. Lily, do you think rice flour could win this? No, because you know what, there’s this kinda… Powdery coating, right? Yeah. But I do like the crunch of it, but I’m not gonna say it’s the winner. There’s honestly a chance that if you cut it to a different ratio. I think the potato starch is gonna be awful, I hate potato starch in cooking, I hate potato starch. No way, dude, it’s gonna be powdery in your mouth, it’s gonna turn to sludge. Excuse me. Mm, I see what you mean now. Feel the sludge in your mouth from the potato starch rehydrating with your spit. I don’t know what’s wrong with your mouth, but my mouth is not sludgy. I have the moistest mouth in the west, okay? That’s nothing to be proud of. I’m very anti potato starch. To me it’s chalky, it gets sludgy in your mouth, it’s heavy, it absorbs more oil I think. Even look at the way, this is on a draining rack, right? And we’re just getting excess on the outside. I’m very anti potato starch. To me I think this is a two horse race between my pants chicken here. That one got deep in there. Thank you. Everybody put your hand over the one you think should win. Okay? On three? Wait! Lily. Lilian! On three, on three, on three. One, two, tres. Two for, okay! Nicole, tie breaker, come here. We need another mouth. Nicole, do you consent to eating half-eaten chicken? Hell yeah. I’ll eat that. Okay, AP flour. Yeah. Okay. I don’t know, there’s this one if you want that one. Okay. Okay. AP flour. AP flour wins, there you have it. Wait, that means… This myth munched us. With our special guest star Nicole, give it up for Nicole, woo! Bye. Okay, Myth Munchers, let us see who wins. Just to reiterate what we’ve done today, we tested the myth that you gotta dredge your fried chicken in whole eggs, we tested water, buttermilk, turns out egg whites really give you the crispiest fried chicken. We tested out cooking your chicken in batches versus crowding the pan, and found out that a reasonable amount of crowding, as long as you’re not double layering it, really does allow you to cook more chicken for more people faster. Don’t be too afraid of crowding your pan as long as the oil doesn’t overflow on it. Then we tested peanut versus Crisco versus lard, found out that pig stink is pretty overwhelming when it comes to fried chicken and Crisco makes your mouth feel funny and peanut oil, woohoohoo, that’s the Goldilocks oil right there. Finally, dredging AP flour versus corn starch, rice flour, and potato starch, it was really close, honestly, you can use any of these and make good fried chicken, but pure AP flour is our way to go. I’m out of breath from talking a little bit fast. Trevor! Hi, I’m Trevor, and I guessed whole egg, crowding, peanut, and potato starch. I got two right. You got two right, Trevor’s in the lead. I spit on Lily by accident, I’m really sorry. Gross. Trevor, do you wanna press charges against Lily for spitting on him? I wanna press charges. Thank you, Lily sucks. Lily, what’d you guess? I said whole egg, batch, Crisco, potato. Bock bock. I got zero. Lily, I’m sorry. It’s not a joke, and we overreacted. I got spit on, and I failed. Remind you of childhood? All right, Vi, what do you got? Whole egg, batches, peanut, corn starch. Uno! Uno, yeah, the hard to beat zero. I said egg white, batches, peanut, AP flour. I got three right, making me I think the official winner for the first time ever in “Myth Munchers” history. Wow! Go, Josh! Please clap, please clap. And Lily, that makes you the loser. That means you gotta do the chicken dance while we’re doing the outro, you gotta do the chicken dance right now. Do it. What did we learn today? Did we learn intricate methods about fried chicken cookery? Sure. Did we learn things about what Trevor’s mouth do? We did a little bit, but I think what we really have learned is that fried chicken is the great unifier, you know? No matter which side of the political spectrum you’re on, you know, whether you’re Jeb Bush asking people to clap, or you’re Nancy Reagan doing god knows what she was doing in Hollywood in the 1970s, everybody likes fried chicken, you know? From one corner of the globe, from Mozambique to Mali to Mauritania to Mauritius, to Morocco to Mongolia. All the way back to Madagascar, and Malta. That’s a different kind of chicken dance. The world loves fried chicken, I love the world, and most importantly, I love you. Stay crispy out there, friends. I don’t like that chicken dance. And when in doubt, chicken it out. Can I go home? Can we go home now? I don’t like that chicken dance. I can’t breathe. I haven’t looked at Lily once, I have no idea what’s happening. Thank you for liking, subscribing, commenting, if you haven’t done any of those things, please do that, and please subscribe to Lily’s TikTok. Lily, what’s handle? I don’t know, it has numbers in it. Great. Great plug, Lily. Awesome at doing social media. We’ll see you all next time. Hey, you! Cook up your own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron. Available now at Mythical.com.