Our Favorite Fried Chicken Recipes

While there are dozens of ways to cook chicken, no method can compete with frying. Roasting, baking and grilling chicken are great, but no cooking technique will give you the same crispy, juicy piece of protein that frying does. There is no "right" way to fry chicken — many chefs have their own secrets they swear by, plus you can easily experiment with the brine, coating, and cut of chicken. Need a good starting place? Try our best fried chicken, perfected in the Food Network Kitchens, which adds cornstarch to the flour dredge to help keep the crust shatteringly crisp.

To help make the coating extra crispy, some people add cornstarch or baking powder to the flour mixture before dredging the chicken. Or, you can swap in self-rising flour, as Katie Lee Biegel does here.

In case you needed another reason to love your air fryer, chicken gets a crispy crust and juicy interior without all the steps or mess of deep-frying. Be sure to cook the chicken in batches to avoid overcrowding the air fryer.

Chicken thighs marinate in a mixture of pickle juice and hot sauce before getting coated with batter, fried and served up on brioche buns. Enjoy them fresh and hot at home or wrap them in foil to take on a picnic.