Fried Chicken Recipes for a Friday Night In

This is the meal that convinces people the whole project is worth it, and it is also the one that needs the most planning - the chicken brines overnight and the slaw needs four hours.

The night before:

• Joint and brine the chicken. Eight to twelve hours.
• Make the coleslaw. It genuinely is a different dish after a rest.
• Mix the spice blend if you have not already. Five minutes, six months of use.

On the day, in this order:

1. Mash the potatoes and hold them over a pan of barely simmering water.
2. Dredge the chicken and rest it ten minutes on a rack - the step that stops the coating falling off.
3. Fry in batches of three, 165 °C, about fifteen minutes a batch.
4. Make the gravy in the frying pan afterwards, using three tablespoons of the fat and scraping the base. This is the best version of that recipe by a clear margin and it costs nothing.

Around £9 for four against about £34 for the equivalent bucket meal.

Read the frying safety guide before you start if you have not fried before. It takes two minutes and it matters more than anything else on this page.