how much oil dose it takes to deep fry chicken?

Bump!

I've always wondered how much it takes to fry something too! Bump!

indulge once in a while but just count it!

you measure the oil before, then fry the chicken and measure it again, the difference is what you used.

I like that idea!!

instead of putting a bunch in the pan and having some left over, just put a tablespoon or 2 in the pan to brown your food with and count all of it. It doesn't need to be swimming in it, just enough to coat it and brown it...

Whatever oil is left you sop up with the biscuits .... Mmmmm can I haz some fried chicken please!?

LOL there you go!

make it your cheat meal, (one a week or month or whatever) and don't count it all.

It's hard to use the subtraction method because you have evaporation and splatter. If you have your oil hot enough not that much oil should be absorbed at all, but I still can't think of how you'd accurately measure it.

I hate this thread it made me run to KFC for a bucket of extra crispy a tub of slaw and a dozen biscuits :X

If you fry properly, very little of the oil stays on the food. There's nothing like measuring before and after yourself, but I'd ballpark it at about a teaspoon, maybe two, for an entire chicken, and here's why:

Alton Brown measured his oil before and after making fish & chips with four pieces of fish and about 4 russet potatoes worth of fries (I say about 4, because it looks like he started with five, but discarded about 1/4 of each potato that couldn't be sliced safely with his V-slicer/mandolin). For all of that, he found that he had only used about 1.5 teaspoons of oil.

An entire chicken is six pieces (two half breasts, two thighs, two drumsticks). The average surface area of the pieces looks roughly equivalent to the surface area of Alton's fish pieces, and he had all those fries to cook, which is a lot of surface area. Surface area matters for this.

You should only fry until the bubbling slows down, never until it stops, because bubbling is moisture turning into steam. As soon as the moisture is gone, it's no longer pushing out, at which point the oil is literally sucked into the food. As long as steam is pushing out, oil is being pushed away. Only some of the surface oil from when you remove the food will remain with it (some of it will drain, and a tiny bit will be absorbed as it cools).

The surface oil will remain on the food when you pan fry, too, no matter how little oil you use, and it's just as possible to leave the food in too long when pan frying, thus causing oil to be sucked in. So pan frying is not inherenlty healthier than deep frying. You just have to know what you're doing.

Drain your chicken on a wire rack. If you drain it on a paper towel, your food is still in contact with the grease.

Good Eats S2E9P1: Fry Hard (part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1bKvLrz_lI
Good Eats S2E9P2: Fry Hard (part 2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=CY49Xxol_WY