This Fried Hen Recipe Has a Briny Twist

The clue is within the identify: on the beachfront Ocean Social in Miami Seaside’s Mid-Seaside, the menu focuses on seafood, from hearth-roasted native clams to golden king crab with mustard dashi dip. However there’s one notable exception that has confirmed to be a must-try: a trompe l’oeil dish of crispy bites of fried hen masquerading as oysters. It’s a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek providing from chef Tristen Epps, a former Chopped winner underneath whose management Ocean Social was acknowledged by the Michelin Information with a Bib Gourmand. Epps loves wordplay and inspiring of us to strive new issues, each of which impressed him to create this progressive chew.

“It looks like we all the time say ‘it tasted like hen,’” he says. “For as soon as, I made hen however with a singular twist.” For culinary nerds, the wordplay begins with the very phrase oyster, which, in poultry parlance, refers to a tiny muscle on the again of the hen. Tender and oh-so-flavorful, this chew is appropriately dubbed the sot l’y laisse, in French: solely the fool would go away it behind.

“If you need the true deal, you must get the precise ‘oyster’ out of the hen to get good tasty nuggets,” Epps says, who nonetheless notes that as a result of every hen boasts solely two oysters, he’s opted to make his personal out of flavorful, juicy hen thighs. 

First, the hen is reduce into oyster-sized parts — this, he says, often means about 4 items per thigh. These he marinates in a spiced buttermilk infused with fish sauce earlier than tossing them in flour seasoned with garlic, onion, white pepper and dashi, after which frying them till crispy. “I really like the play on surf and turf, so including that slight seaweed taste whenever you chew into the hen is a method that I wish to play with the senses,” he says.

He pushes that playfulness to the subsequent degree in his selection of accompaniment, a nori-spiked inexperienced goddess dressing, and his selection of serving vessel, an emptied oyster shell. Generally it confuses diners, however that, he admits, is “half the enjoyable of the dish.” When you don’t have oyster shells laying round, he says you can completely serve these little bites on a skewer or in Chinese language soup spoons. It doesn’t matter what, they’ll be scrumptious.