Making Chicken Sticky

• No matter what ingredients you use, the big challenge of this dish is getting crumbs to stick to the chicken. Both skin-on and skinless chicken contain moisture that reaches the outer surfaces during cooking. When it mixes with crumbs, this moisture produces a mushy breading that easily separates from the meat. Chicken surfaces need to be as dry as possible before being coated with any breadcrumb mixture, letting the fat and moisture in the breading stick to the meat. In the traditional flour-egg-crumb coating, flour keeps raw meat surfaces dry so that egg and crumbs adhere well.

Making the Coating Sticky

• While chicken surfaces need to be dry, bread crumbs benefit from some moisture to help them stick to each other. This makes the crumb coating even and durable during cooking. Mixing oil or other liquid fat with crumbs makes them stick together lightly, but pinching a batch of oily crumbs shows that this is a frail bond for prolonged cooking. Like the crumbs on top of a casserole, oil-soaked breadcrumbs are more likely to cook separately than in clumps. An oil-based crumb coating for chicken will be thin, and crumbs may separate easily during cooking.

Crumb-Coating Techniques

• Many crumb-coating chicken recipes note the benefit of resting the coated pieces before cooking. Resting chicken pieces at room temperature for 30 minutes lets the coating solidify. If coated chicken needs to sit longer before cooking, refrigerate it for safety, then return it to near room temperature. Reducing the difference between meat and cooking temperature can help breading adhere. For oil-coated chicken dipped in crumbs, using soft, rather than dry, breadcrumbs may also slightly improve the adherence of crumbs to the meat and each other.

Cooking Techniques

• Most important to keeping oil and breadcrumbs attached to chicken pieces is your choice of baking, or oven-frying, over stove-top frying or sautéing. Letting chicken pieces sit undisturbed during cooking will keep as much of the crumb coating in place as possible. Limit oil in the baking dish to a light coating. The oil on the chicken will provide enough cooking fat, and the bubbling activity of excess fat will dislodge crumbs. Microwaving is another undisturbed cooking technique, although crumbs may appear pale rather than browned when the dish is done.

Alternative Ingredients

• If egg allergies are not a concern, mayonnaise combines liquid and fat. Regular or low-calorie mayonnaise, spread in a thin coat on chicken pieces, will hold a coat of crumbs securely during baking. Buttermilk offers a flavorful, low-fat alternative to oil, as does a thin coating of yogurt.