Kentucky Kevs's spicy chicken thighs !

I was in the Supermarket the other week and was stopped in my tracks as I walked past the butcher counter. The girl at the counter was a little offended when I screamed " Blooming heck they are the biggest jumbo thighs Ive ever seen pet ! " She was just about to send me and my nose to the local Accident and emergency department when I quickly pointed at the biggest Chicken thighs I have ever seen on her display counter.
I started to laugh as pictures of mutant Chickens running around the Northumberland Wilderness eating "Everything in its path !" raced around my over imaginative child like mind.
Anyway £2.87 brought me 5 of these monsters. I took them home and placed them in the freezer where they remained until today where they were defrosted and today's tea time challenge was set in motion.
In Ashington we have a KFC which I love. Their is something just right about deep frying a chicken. (Obviously the chicken has been humanly killed and lived a full and free range life first.) Its like chalk and cheese (??) so I thought I would have a go at making some kind of super Kev magical spice and herb mix that one day will lead me to opening my own chain of fast food joints across the Wansbeck Valley ! ha ha !
After much digging in all my kitchen cupboards I came up with this bag of tricks.

OK not much of a selection I know and certainly not the exotic combination of herbs and spices that are reportedly used in the KFC brand but when combined together it did make for a tasty treat.

The Mix.
100g of bread crumbs. I use Japanese Panko crumbs because quite simply they are the crunchiest and most Professional kitchens use them. You can buy them on line or your local Oriental supermarket will have them.
2 TBSP dried Thyme.
2 TBSP Smoked Paprika.
2 TBSP Turmeric.
1 TSP chilli powder.
1 TBSP Sea salt.
1 TBSP Chicken gravy powder. I know it sounds silly but I thought it might give it a bit more of a chicken flavour bite to it.

I mixed the lot together.

Then you need to coat the chicken with the mix so first dip the chicken into plain flour,

Then mix one egg and a cup of milk together, put the flour covered chicken into the egg/milk mix.

Make sure the egg mix soaks the chicken. The flour makes the egg/milk stick to chicken and the egg/milk mix makes the bread crumbs stick to the chicken. got it ?? ha ha !

Completely coat the Chicken Thighs.

Now I thought that if you remove the Chicken skin then bread crumb the thighs and placed them into a oven of about 180 degrees C to cook for about 20 minutes this would be a very low fat version of this dish. The only problem is sometimes it can go a bit dry in the oven so I went the full Skin on deep fat fryer on mortuary slab version ! ha ha ! Well I started it in the fryer and then finished it off in the oven. So it was a little healthier ???
I set the fryer to 170 degrees C then cooked the Thighs for about 5 minutes until golden.

Then they went into the oven for about 12 minutes. I have a kitchen thermometer so probed the thighs and made sure they were over 73 degrees C. They were at 74 which was perfect.

A few thin French fried chips would have been nice but I had some of the wonderful Tomato Relish I made a few weeks back which took this lovely little supper into another wonderfully scrummie dimension. Give it a try you do not need to use Jumbo Chicken thighs if you do not want to. Just cut some Chicken Breasts into thick strips and although I think the thigh meat has more flavour the breast meat will be just as nice too.

Anna Hansen's tomato relish. 

Crunch-tastic ! ha ha !