re: Popeyes - How to get batter texture?

The first few pieces of chicken, onion rings, steak fingers, fried dill pickles, or country fried steak never have the surface texture I like. They are too smooth, with not enough bits of crust.

Popeyes uses the same pan of breading flour (sort of) all day long. After a while, the breading flour gets full of bits of flour/liquid "pebbles" that make the bits of crust I like in my coated/fried food. The longer you use the same flour container to bread your product, the more crusty if will bread.

You can bread with Panko, which has the breading bits already formed, or you can make your own bits before breading the food. The second is usually what I do. I season my flour and then drizzle little drops of the milk/buttermilk/egg wash/water/whatever into the dredging flour. Then I stir it and go again, until I get it to the stage of Popeye's breading flour an hour or two after the start. At that point, I start breading my stuff and from the start, it has the bits of coating that make it crusty like I want.

Someone will tell me, but I am suspicious places like Popeye's Hardly ever change out their flour. Maybe at the end of shift they put the pan in the freezer and pull it out the next day?

When I was a grill guy at T-Willies Frostop, over half a century back, this is exactly what we did with our onion ring seasoned flour. At closing, we would put it into the freezer for use the next day. Because we did that, it already had the flour bits.

Someone said bread the stuff and then hold it under refrigeration for a while before frying. That is exactly what we did with our onion rings way back then.

I cook a mean chicken fried steak, and steak fingers and what I have shared here is exactly what I do. (make the bits, bread the meat, let it sit and then fry it. Having said that, I think Piccadilly's (Love the place) breads their country fried steak with Panko breading.