Camping at this campground has become a tradition. Last year, I roasted a four pound whole chicken in the 5-WAY Cast-Iron Cooker, dutch oven style, and we loved it! This year I thought I might be able to top last year's chicken by deep frying it after the same slow cooking process (I guess I can't call it slow cooked since it reached finished temperature a lot faster than I thought, only about 30 maybe 40 minutes). I was right! This years chicken was even better than my famous chicken from last year but honestly you can't go wrong either way.
The recipe is very easy. Roast your choice of lightly salted chicken pieces in the 5-WAY Cast-Iron Cooker over a heat source like a campfire or a Firebox 5" Stove with a pile of hot coals on top. Bring the internal temperature of the chicken up to at least 160°F. Mix up some Lowery seasoning salt and some baking powder with a couple cups of flour in one bowl. Mix up eggs with a splash of water in another. Get your oil up to deep frying temperature. Coat each piece of chicken in the flour mixture first then the egg wash then back in the flour before being fried in a 5-WAY Cast-Iron Fry Basket. If you want extra crispy chicken, repeat that process twice before going into the hot oil. Fry till golden brown. The result is amazingly tender and juicy fried chicken with lovely crispy crunchy!
Here are some links for the camp cooking gear used in this video:
We are campground camping here in the desert. We've got our camp back behind us and then
if I rotate you can see some of these beautiful cliffs behind us. And it's dinner time and
last year when we camped here I cooked a whole chicken in the five-way cast iron. Tonight we're
going to do something similar but I wanted to change it up a little bit and what I'm going to
do is I'm going to roast it or I don't know what you'd call it. I'm going to do it in the cast iron
over the fire and kind of slow cook the chicken but then we're going to take the chicken and bread
it and deep fry it to just give it a crispy outside fried baked chicken. I don't know.
Anyway let's get to work. Let's start with these thighs. They actually look like boneless thighs
so that might be kind of nice. Let's put those in there first and like I say I'm going to deep fry
this after everything has reached 160 degrees. So I'll put a thermometer in there and as soon as
everything reaches 160 degrees then we'll transition to deep frying. That way we'll know
everything got cooked. So I'm trying to keep my left hand clean so I can salt everything but I'm
not very good at shaking the salt shaker with my left hand so it's kind of awkward. Anyway I thought
I would do the breasts kind of in the middle and what these are is kind of a thin sliced
breast. Let's see how the some of it's thin some of it's thick so I don't know how this
breast meat stuff will turn out. I thought I'd put it in the middle
so that it would cook the least because the breast meat's kind of dry.
I don't want it to be overcooked. You can get away with overcooking
dark meat a little bit better than you can and these look like they'll go in there
sideways which is nice. You'll be able to fit a lot of those in there. Once again just a little more
salt with my awkward left hand salt shaking and I think that's ready to go on the fire.
My fire hasn't produced very many hot coals yet so I'm just gonna put it here for now and
let that reflected heat you know just start warming everything up if I can get them.
And that fire's hot hot hot. Yeah that'll speed it up anyway. I'm just gonna set up a little
deep fryer station right here on the end of this picnic table and we're also going to cook
some fried zucchini so that's one of our summer favorites. I'm gonna run these
pins through at about this level just a little bit lower. I've just been rotating this every
I don't know five or ten minutes just try to I don't want it to get too hot so it's burning
stuff on the bottom. Run that hose right out the side and put together the fryer basket.
Put this handle on it that's all we have to do and then this is our clip for
holding our fryer basket in its draining position there. Because we've had so many raccoon problems.
Okay so yeah yeah last night I put it in my car but in the day don't leave it out.
They look like they're about the right thickness. Very nice. I just checked the temperature a
minute ago and it was a lot hotter on the bottom than it was on the top so I just flipped the
whole thing over and I've just given it a minute on this side. It's really pretty close. We'll do
a few of them going here. You want to do those into the egg and then back in the flour.
Looks like our oil is hot enough. In fact we could probably turn it down a little bit but let's not
do that just yet. Okay it's been upside down for probably I don't know 10 minutes or so.
Let's see what the temperature is now. I'm just gonna stay kind of high. I think we're done.
That felt done when I pushed it in. Oh yeah we're done. They're plenty hot.
Yep they're ready. We're getting some wind now so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this windscreen
around at least this side and I think this batch of fried zucchini is done. Rotate this around here.
We've got some hornets coming after our chicken. They think they want it more than us.
Here's our first fried zucchini. I want to try some chicken. I'm going to throw in some chicken
just so we can try it. Flour, egg. Go ahead and drop it in. I think it's cool enough you can touch
it man. It's still pretty hot. Yeah they do. That's hot. It's good. That's very hot. Yummy
All right I'm gonna pull up this chicken. It's kind of a golden brown. It's not super brown.
Yeah let's do that last one that's probably full for this batch.
Quite a few in there. I think the oil is just getting a little bit hotter.
Just enough that these are able to brown up nicely. I think these zucchini are done.
Let them drain there for a second. Make sure you want to go twice of everything.
All right there's one double dipped.
The oil's definitely hotter than it was the last chicken we did. Now let's just do one
dip on this one. We'll just try the one piece with the double dip. Yeah. All righty boy.
Drumstick number two. Extra crispy. That double dipper is totally extra crispy.
Oh they're golden brown this time. Beautiful. I think that's done. Don't you think son?
That double dip looks good huh? Looks super crispy. Look at that so much.
Had them double dipping.
The last two drumsticks. Maybe I'll get some plates out.
That's starting to look good. We got more in the five-way cast iron.
Look at that. That's beautiful. We got some wild children over there.
That's the one you had me double dip for you. Go ahead. Is it too hot to take a bite?
Be careful. Is it good? Look at this chicken tender. It's golden brown. Look at that beauty.
These ones are really hot. Yeah it feels hot. That is good huh? Wow. What kind of seasoning did you
put in the flour? Just floury seasoned salt. Just floury seasoned salt. A little bit of baking powder.
My grandpa said the baking powder helps it to stick.
That's good. Yeah that's good. I wonder if there's a good place in the river over there.
All right folks I'm going to finish cooking up this chicken and we're going to eat our dinner
but stay tuned because in the morning I'm trying some new things that I've never done before.
I'm going to try baking in the reflector oven but I'm going to actually bake a cake. So I've
always done cinnamon rolls or biscuits so doing a cake I thought would be a good challenge but
not only am I baking a cake but I'm doing all of this with the octagon rather than the hexagon.
So I figured out the setup for the octagon. I'm going to try that as well. What do you think
Luke? Can you eat any more? Are you just full? You can eat more? Check out these thighs. How good
they're turning out. Look at that.
