re: Popeyes - How to get batter texture?

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This video shows the battering and breading part of the prep.

Bonus - you find out that Popeyes originated with a local Hawaiian family.

LINK

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Bonus - you find out that Popeyes originated with a local Hawaiian family.

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I always thought Al Copeland started Popeyes

I never worked at Popeyes, but DID work for another South Louisiana spicy chicken chain that is no more. After sorting the white from dark, we would season the chicken with 4 parts salt to 1 part red pepper. The pieces then went to the cooler overnight.

When ready to cook, they were dipped in a yellowish dip (which also had the "secret ingredient," a coloring that made the chicken bright orange under the heat lamps.

Dipped in regular flour, bang the pieces together to remove excess flour, then fried.

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.