I’m making fried chicken from every continent. Listen, I’ve said it before, I will say it again, I will say it until the day that I die. Fried chicken is the greatest food in the world, and you know that because damn near every place in the world has their own delicious fried chicken recipe. Today, we’re going to make a bunch of them, one from each continent in the world, in fact, to see what we can learn, and definitely to eat some tasty fried chicken. Let’s dig into it. First up, we got North America. Now, there’s a lot of different places we could have gone with this, but we decided to go with the piece of fried chicken that has influenced more fried chickens around the world. That is American Southern fried chicken. I chose my personal favorite, which is Cajun fried chicken, found down in Louisiana. You think about Popeyes chicken. It was founded by Al Copeland. I think they do the best job of it simply because of the kinds of spices that you find there. It’s very heavy on the cayenne. There’s generally a lot of thyme. I think this is the best fried chicken in the world. As far as the global origins of fried chicken go, you’ve seen people fry it for thousands of years. You go back to China, Middle East, West Africa, they’ve been frying chicken for a long time. But the actual batter coated or flour dredged chicken that generally comes from America. In Scotland, they were doing it with breadcrumbs. But to me, this is the quintessential fried chicken in the world. And then I marinated it in buttermilk, hot sauce, and a lot of Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning. I just think it does a really great job. You could make your own Creole seasoning at home, but there’s a lot of cayenne and a lot of thyme in there. Black pepper. It is absolutely delicious. I let it sit in the marinade for about four hours. You need some time for all the enzymes and the buttermilk to do their work and then for the salt to actually penetrate the meat. And then I seasoned up the flour with a lot of the same things that I had in that marinade. We added some garlic and some onion and paprika in there just to give it a little bit more color and a little bit more consistency. I did a single dredge on this because the buttermilk already gives a lot of body for the flour to cling to, and I actually let it sit in the flour for about 15 minutes until I shook it off. That way, all of that flour gets absorbed into the chicken skin and doesn’t create a steam pocket. I opted to cast iron fry this a little bit more shallow than if you just dropped it into a deep fryer because that way you’re actually getting a little bit of skin contact with the pan. That’s gonna give those delicious little brown bits that kind of cause some inconsistencies that actually make this chicken a lot better. Alright, let’s give it a try. Let’s see how we did. This is the best day. I think we should do every single episode like this, but only chicken. We just choose a different fried chicken. We could do this for years! A different fried chicken from every continent? My god, this should have been the fried chicken show. This, to me, is just absolutely perfect. You get that little skirt of skin, the flour stuck to it perfectly, it’s super, super crispy, coat all over, and it’s not a big dough ball. It wasn’t double dredged, this is a single dredge. Gotta put the Louisiana hot sauce on it. Hell yes, brother. Even though fried chicken was like, invented 10,000 years ago, and then by the Scottish a couple hundred years ago, World War II and American soldiers being stationed all around the world, kind of one of the first times that you saw people really intermingling on a mass scale. That’s where a lot of these chicken dishes really come from, and it’s because of American southern fried chicken. This is still the standard, I think. I’m proud to be an American! Where at least I know, everybody, I’m free! I don’t know the rest of the lyrics. Next up, we’re taking a trip down to South America. Now again, there’s a lot of different places that we could have chosen here, but to me, Peru is one of the absolute culinary capitals of the world, and so we chose chicharron de pollo. Peru is known as the birthplace of fusion cuisine. You had a lot of traders from Portugal, from Spain, from China, and Japan, all using Peru as a very strategic port, and you look at all their food, and it really shows that. From lomo saltado with the soy sauce and the wok to chicharron de pollo. So in Peruvian cuisine, if you use the Japanese food, they call it Nikkei cuisine. When you use the Chinese food, they call it Chifa cuisine. And I think that that is what’s behind this sort of like cube coated and then fried because you see that a lot in Cantonese cuisine as well. And then it gets served with salsa criolla Which is a delicious mix of herbs and then onions that have been marinated a little bit of peppers in there. Peru is also the birthplace of chili peppers. I just love the food so much. I cut the chicken breast up into bite sized pieces. Again, that tends to be a very common culinary technique in Chinese cuisine and then I marinated it in a little bit of soy, mustard, cumin, oregano, lemon juice, a lot of different global influences going into that. I actually tossed the chicken breast with some egg, that’s gonna give it that lovely coating. And again, we’re going back to a lot of Chinese technique here, where we’re taking AP flour, which is made from wheat, been around in China for thousands of years, and then actually mixing that with cornstarch, which you see in a lot of contemporary Chinese cuisine. We’re individually coating each piece of, heck, I’d call this popcorn chicken, and then we’re throwing it in a deep fryer at 350 just until you get an internal temp of about 155, carry over to 160. Let’s give this bad boy a taste. I’ve been eyeing this piece right here. Get a little bit of that salsa. I’m gonna try the salsa criolla by itself. Every culture should serve every piece of meat with some sort of pickled vegetable. In Korea, a little foreshadowing, we call it banchan. Every culture needs banchan. In America, all we get is coleslaw. It’s so, one, delicious. You taste the cumin. You get the mustard, the lemon. I love really heavily marinating any chicken before you fry it. The most fascinating thing, though, is tracking the origins of all this because this, like, tastes and looks almost unmistakably Chinese. It was a thing that I didn’t realize about a lot of Peruvian food until actually making lomo saltado because I was like, why is there soy sauce in this and there’s also potatoes? And it’s like, well, Chinese people went to Peru like 500 years ago. Like it. Happens, and it’s a really awesome culinary mixture. Damn. KFC, you gotta get on the chicharron de pollo from Peru. This is excellent. Now we’re taking a trip over to Asia. A majority of the world’s population lives in Asia, so there was a lot to choose from here, but to me, if American fried chicken is 1A, Korean fried chicken might be 1A+ because it is really, really that good. We made Yangnyeom chicken right here. This means seasoned chicken in Korean. There are a lot of debatable stories about the origin of Korean fried chicken, but a lot of scholars do think it came from American military occupation after the 1940s and especially 1950s with the Korean War. You didn’t really see a lot of Korean fried chicken spots spring up until the 1980s though, where it really took off. The original developer of Korean fried chicken noticed that his customers were complaining that the roofs of their mouths were getting scratched up because it was too crispy. And so he says that he decided to sauté it in a sweet and spicy sauce based with gochujang. to sort of soften it up, and that is where we see that excellent, sticky, spicy combo. I took potato starch and AP flour, the potato starch is where things get really interesting here, and I whisked it with the eggs and just a little bit of salt and pepper to season it up. Once I got a thick batter created, I tossed the chicken wings in there, and I let it get all nice and coated, and then I dropped it in some 350 degree oil for about five minutes, just until it got nice and blonde, and then I pulled them out. But here’s the thing, Korean fried chicken is always double fried and that’s one of the reasons it is so crispy and also one of the reasons it holds the sauce so well. I jacked the oil to about 375 or 380 degrees and then I dropped it back in. I added some oil to the pan and then I added chopped garlic and sautéed that for just a couple seconds until it got nice and aromatic. I added white vinegar, gochujang, ketchup, rice syrup and then I just stirred that all together and let it come to a nice simmer and then added my chicken wings and coated them till they were nice and sticky. These are the ones that I’ve been eyeing. Here’s the thing, I’ve been having a great time eating the fried chicken. You all saw that. I wasn’t lying to you. But, my mind kept wandering over here. It’s like the meme with the guy who looks at the, and there’s a, and you go, ooh. He goes, ooh. Let’s give this a taste. Oh my God, we kept the wings whole, which is my favorite way to eat Korean fried chicken. There’s also just one verb in Korean, chimaek, which means chicken and beer. And boy, do I love drinking beer and eating chicken. How? How does it get better? Like how, how can you possibly get better than this? It’s that sweet and spicy sauce. Like gochujang is a fermented chili and rice paste. The rice is what gives it that body. It gives it that stick, but also the rice syrup. It’s not like honey. It’s not like corn syrup. It has this amazing depth of flavor. You’d be surprised how thick the batter looks, but then when you let the sauce soak into it, it really is. It’s like this armored carapace that soaks up all the flavor. This is a beautiful, beautiful dish, man. I, listen, Korean food, again, one of the beautiful wonders of the culinary world, especially with the amount of fermented ingredients and chilies in there. This is just. Next up, we’re going to Africa. Now we chose Cameroonian fried chicken here, but you see a lot of similar recipes all around West Africa from Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria. The thing that I’d never seen with the Cameroonian fried chicken is using celery in the actual marinade. A lot of West African fried chicken, what you would do typically is wash it and then you boil it in a marinade first and fry it naked, which makes it really unique from any of these fried chickens that you see around the globe. Another hallmark of West African cooking is the use of chilies, spices, and aromatics, things that you have probably never tasted, like grains of paradise, a lot of scotch bonnet, and also, also bouillon cubes, which man, if you’re not using bouillon cubes in your fried chicken, you are missing out. And Cameroon fried chicken is typically made for parties or large gatherings. It’s a big crowd pleasing favorite. And as I said before, West Africa is definitely one of the regions that American fried chicken does get inspiration from. I added celery, parsley, onion, garlic, ginger, bouillon powder, some white pepper, salt, and water to the blender that’s actually going to act as a sort of aromatic poaching liquid. I added our delicious green smoothie to a pot and I brought it to a boil and I added the chicken in there, just to sort of steam and poach for about 10 minutes until it is fully cooked through and super, super aromatic. What I love about this technique. It’s almost like a hot marinade. You get all of the flavors, and the perfumes, and those aromatics penetrating the meat, which you don’t really see in a lot of these other recipes. Since the chicken’s already fully cooked, I jacked the oil temperature up to about 375 degrees and I dropped all the pieces in there for just about one or two minutes until it gets a nice, beautiful golden brown crust on there. Let’s eat it. I’ve eaten Ghanaian fried chicken before. The difference here, I’ve never seen celery being used in a marinade like this, but I sound like I’m shilling for the celery lobby right now, but man, it is a unique vegetable with a super, super unique flavor that you don’t get anywhere else. You can literally smell it on this. Dude, this is incredible. I haven’t eaten a leg today yet. The way that all of that flavor penetrates down to the bone and the meat, because you effectively made a chicken soup with it before you fried it. None of the other fried chickens smell like that on the inside. And I think that is really key. Because I’m coming from such an American palate though, I do miss the super crispy fried coating on it. But that said, like the crispy chicken skin on the outside is super, super well salted. And this is an absolute delight. Honestly, what I really want to do is take the cooking techniques and the flavors of the marinades of this, and then like add a sort of American style dredge and coating to it. I think that’d be perfect. But like, this is absolutely excellent. Next up we’re going over to Europe. Now there are a lot of different fried chicken dishes in Europe, but we happened to pick one that was actually invented by an American. This is the Parmo. It originated in Teesside, specifically in Middlesbrough, by a Greek American World War II officer who ended up staying in England. This dish was created in 1958 and was obviously inspired by chicken parmesan, however the parmo has become, sorry, “parmar”, that’s more Australian, has become uniquely British in and of itself. Which is especially funny because if you look at fried chicken through the Scottish lens of chicken being coated in breadcrumbs then fried in animal fat, you see the migration to America via Italy with chicken parmesan and then all the way back to England when you cover it in béchamel and cheese. I took a boneless, skinless chicken breast and I threw it in a plastic bag just so I could beat the crap out of it until it is super, super thin. Not quite as thin as a schnitzel, but you do want it to be quite round and flat. And then I dredged it in seasoned flour, then into an egg wash mixture, and then into breadcrumbs. I shallow fried it for about three minutes each side in some vegetable oil, and then I put it on an ovenproof baking dish. I made some béchamel by doing a classic butter and flour one to one ratio, and then cooking that until it’s nice and blonde and that flour is absorbing all that fat. I added warm whole milk gradually and stirred until it’s nice and thick. I just seasoned it up simply with some nutmeg, salt and pepper, and a little bit of parmesan. I spread that thick, fudgy béchamel all over that chicken, and then here is the kicker. In America, you probably use mozzarella cheese, maybe a provolone. In England, however, you are more likely to use cheddar cheese. So we added our shredded cheddar on top and broiled it until it was just melted. The Korean chicken may have caught my eye, but this, this is the wild card. This is like a Man U fan just screaming his head off, and you can’t take your eyes off. And he’s like, if you’re not mank you’re a wank! And you’re like, I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I am captivated. I have no idea what’s going on with this, because you got cheddar cheese, you got a bunch of creamy sauce, covering fried chicken, super popular British pub dish, and I have never been to a British pub, but man, you just, it just turns into a fudge on top. That is something that I’ve never tasted in my life, which seems crazy, because all the ingredients seem very common. Cheddar cheese, cream sauce, a classic, what I would have called a shake and bake chicken that I grew up eating, just a breadcrumb crusted chicken breast. When you combine it all together It is a little bit arresting to the senses to have that much cheddar flavor in cream with the fried chicken, which is inherently greasy. This isn’t a greasy version of fried chicken. You’re gonna get some fat in there. With Korea, you see the penchant for sweet mixed with spicy. You have the pickled onions over in Peru. American fried chicken often served with hot sauce. Cameroon has all this freshness going on with it. And the British parmo. Again, this isn’t the only fried chicken they got in Britain. But. The British parmo, man. It is just cream on cheese on fried bird meat. There is no reprieve from the fact that you are just eating fat on fat. It is objectively delicious, but again, a combo I’m not used to having. And also, they typically serve it with chips. Probably a couple pints of Abbot’s, man, I’d have a great time. I’m just watching, watching football screaming, flood the box! Not knowing what that means at all. That’s real football, mate, isn’t it? None of this ticky tacky BS. A bit of controversy here about what makes a continent. Because I grew up learning that Australia was just simply a continent, and I asked why. And they said, because it’s a continuous landmass. And I said, why are Europe and Asia different? And they said, there is mountains. And I said, we got the Rocky Mountains. Why isn’t it West North America and East North America? They said, shut up, Josh, stop asking questions. And so I did. We are calling it Australia and Oceania because I think you find a lot of incredible culinary influence in Oceania. Specifically, we are going to Guam here for mustard fried chicken. Now, Guamanian food, especially, you have a lot of influence from the American military occupation there. Again, we’re seeing a big theme, but that’s how you get Spam used a lot. And that is likely where this fried chicken comes in. But there is also the Chamorro people who are the native people of Guam that of course have a ton of culinary influence and then seeing as Guam is pretty close to a lot of East Asian nations, you see influence from the Philippines from China and from Japan. So, the fried chicken recipe here utilizes mustard as a very, very heavy marinade, but the most interesting thing about this fried chicken is actually the condiment. It’s called finadene. It’s a mixture of lemon, soy, green onion, white onion, and Thai chili peppers. I whisked together garlic powder, a whole lot of mustard, and an egg. That’s both gonna act as a marinade, but also the binder for the eventual frying. I added chicken pieces, cut in the very American style, to that marinade. I tossed it, and I let it sit for a couple hours. I left a whole lot of that mustard marinade on there, and then threw it into some AP flour, seasoned with salt and pepper. Then I simply fried that chicken off at 350 degrees and you do see some of that mustard marinade kind of seeping out in there, which sort of recombines in the fryer back into that crust. I think it’s gonna give it a really unique flavor. I’m really excited to taste this one because I’ve made Honduran fried chicken before that also utilizes a mustard marinade, but I ain’t never seen a mustard marinade this heavy on some chicken and I can’t wait to see what it does Perfect little chicken thigh. Gotta put the finadene on it. I’m gonna get some of the chunks. Yeah, buddy. Using the back of the fork like a pro. This guy’s eaten food before. Dude, dude, new dimension of taste unlocked. Not only do you get that super pungent, almost astringent mustard flavor in there, but also combined with all the soy and the lemon and the chilies and the onion in there, this has the most acid and salt in such a good way. The Guamanian fried chicken is the absolute sleeper hit from all around the world, from every single continent on the, wait, we said every single continent, right? Isn’t Antarctic technically a continent? Did we not do something? Antarctic fried chicken? I get it. Cause it’s frozen. It’s frozen chicken tenders. Well, joke’s on you! Cause I am gonna. I’ve never done that before. And that’s a new sensation for my body. The weirdest thing is it’s not bad. I think if you’re in Antarctica, this is probably a really nice treat. No, not necessarily in the running for my favorite, but I will take those chicken tenders home. Thank you, Lily, for assaulting me with them. At the end of the day here, what did we learn? Fried chicken? Dank! That is my thesis for this entire episode, actually. No, it’s really awesome to see the cultural migration through one dish. You can be at any corner of the globe, and more or less, people want the same flavors. They want delicious bird meat that is seasoned really well, that is served with something that is acidic, that is bright, that is fun, except if you’re in England, then you just want more stodgy, pasty sauce on it. But hey, that is delicious in its own right as well. Thank you all so much for stopping by Mythical Kitchen. Let us know how you like this video. We’ve never done anything like this before and tell us what food you want to see us cook from every single continent next. We’ll see y’all next time. Hey, you, cook up your own feast while wearing the Mythical Kitchen apron. Available now at mythical.com