Honey Chicken – STAYS CRISPY for hours!

 This is a Honey Chicken that’s built to last! This recipe brings together a plethora of Asian cooking secrets for a Honey Chicken that stays crispy for hours, even after tossing in the honey sauce. The Chinese Fry batter yields a crispy, puffy coating that’s light and not greasy, and requires no special ingredients or equipment!

Built-to-last CRISPY Honey Chicken

“Dude, you’ve cracked it!”

This was my brother’s response on first bite. What we thought to be an elusive “they-must-be-using-chemicals!” crispy puffy coating on Honey Chicken that stays crispy for hours and hours even coated in the sticky honey sauce.…….turns out anyone can make it at home without special ingredients or tools.

And when I say “this stays crispy for hours”, I mean that it’s crispy even 4 hours after coating in sauce. Not just little wisps of crispy edges. I’m talking MAJOR crunch factor.

Crispy preview – TURN UP the volume!! 

(And in case you are wondering, yes, my brother calls me dude when excited about cracking cooking codes, and no we are not 18😂).

(Also, in case you are wondering, this recipe was a fluke, not scientifically approached. You won’t find any other Honey Chicken recipes online like this one – there’s a handful of unique things about it. It brings together learnings from my mother’s Karaage, and my Sweet and Sour Pork and Caramel Popcorn (yes, really – read on!))

Close up photo showing the crispy, puffy coating of Honey Chicken. Notice how the crust separates from the chicken (puffy crust), the juicy chicken flesh, and how the crust isn’t “bending in” where the chopsticks are holding it ie it’s CRISPY!

INGREDIENTS

1. Built-to-last crispy puffy Chinese fry batter

Here’s what you need to make a crispy Chinese fry batter that will stay crispy even overnight in the fridge (no exaggeration) and for hours once tossed in the Honey Chicken Sauce:

Notes on ingredients for stay-crispy puffy Chinese fry batter:

• COLD soda water or club soda or seltzer water – NOT sparkling mineral water which is naturally carbonated (ie fizzy). We want something that has man made bubbles in it which is fizzier. The fizz helps with the puff, the cold is key for ultra crispy:  the shock of the cold batter hitting the hot oil = super crispy virtually immediately;
• MORE cornflour/cornstarch than flour – flour has gluten which causes crispy batters to soften. Cornflour is gluten free, so using this in the batter is key for crispiness. Why not just use all cornflour? Because it becomes like a thick glue that’s not workable as a batter, and also because cornflour stays white when fried. We want a nice golden colour for Honey Chicken;
• Flour – we need some to to activate the baking powder to make this crispy coating puffy (baking powder doesn’t work on cornflour) and also so the chicken pieces fry up nice and golden (as above – cornflour doesn’t go golden when fried, it’s stays white); and
• Baking powder – key ingredient to give the batter some lift so it’s puffy, rather than a thin coating that’s fully adhered to the chicken like in Sweet & Sour Pork.

Excellent All Purpose crispy fry batter

This is a fry batter you can use for any recipe that calls crispy batter pieces of meat, such as General Tso’s Chicken, Orange Chicken, Lemon Chicken, even Sweet and Sour Pork if you want a thicker, crunchier crust. And you needn’t restrict yourself to Asian recipes!

There are some extra tricks to using it for seafood (prawns/shrimp, fish) because they leech more water as they cook. Using the recipe as written, they are super crispy when hot, but go soggy as they cool. I will publish this fry batter as an “All Purpose Crispy Fry Batter” once I’ve figured out the best way to use it for seafood and vegetables.