Men in Aprons: The Dredge: Print This

Today's question come straight from the search engine hits. "Why do you dredge chicken in flour before cooking."

That's a very interesting question, and one that needs a little clarification. If you are dredging chicken in flour before cooking, we need to ask if you are then going to drench it in egg or if you are going to take it straight to the hot oil. The most obvious answer to this question is that you dredge chicken in flour to create a coating or a crust.

If you dredge chicken in flour, you can take it straight to the skillet and cook it. Depending on the level of oil, you can make a nice chicken-fried crust on it without having to drench it in egg first. If you are deep frying or chicken-frying it may need a double drench-dredge or else the oil will wash it off before a crust forms.

When frying with a egg drench and some sort of crust, we coat the chicken with flour first for two reasons: (1). As protection. The flour coating protects the chicken from the blast furnace of the hot oil. (2). As a binder. The flour coating helps bind the egg drench and coating to the chicken. If it wasn't there, the egg would slide right off the chicken when you performed the drench.