Easy Fried Chicken Recipe (and what happened in New York!)

This easy fried chicken recipe uses 3 cups of oil and is finished in the oven. It’s insanely juicy, tender and packed with flavor as well! (Jump directly to the recipe.)

It’s with some sadness that I won’t be making my easy fried chicken as much as I used to. True, fried chicken is one of those treats that you aren’t suppose to have too often. But in our household, at least up until recently, we were having it fairly frequently. Like WAY too frequently. But that’s what happens when your significant other bicycles 250 miles a week. Not only can he eat with impunity, but he craves high protein meals like this easy fried chicken recipe. About once or twice a month my partner AJ would announce to me his craving for fried chicken, and how could I refuse his adorable face? But it looks like AJ won’t be cycling for awhile now, so we’re going to curb our fried chicken intake.

It all started when AJ and I were heading to New York for a little vacation. I was speaking at the big BlogHer conference and we figured it was a good excuse to make a little vacation out of it. AJ hadn’t been to New York for about 15 years and I wanted to show him the city that I love to visit. We had grandiose plans to walk all over the island of Manhattan (with possible day trips into Brooklyn), visit all the museums, see a Broadway show and eat our way through every bakery I could drag him to. On the days that I was speaking or attending BlogHer, AJ had planned to go cycling. He’s cycles 250 miles a week and the idea of going for a period of time without cycling was totally foreign to him. He had found a website called SpinLister which basically is like AirBnB for bikes. He rented a really great road bike for minimal amounts of money and had already mapped out some routes in New Jersey to cycle in.

But, as is often the case, things didn’t go quite as planned. The day before the conference, he went to swap out the pedals at a bike shop so for his special cleat shoes he had brought with him. A quick trip around the block to test out the peddles wasn’t so quick. I got a phone call form him and about 15 minutes after he left. He had gotten into an accident. A car had cut him off in the bike lane.

I dashed out the door in a panic state. This, of course, is the phone call I always dread when he goes cycling. We missed each other on the streets, as AJ walked back four blocks back to our friend’s apartment and I ran to where he was went down. After another phone call, I sprinted back through the streets of New York only to see AJ faint on the sidewalk with his bike. Things just got real.

A call for the ambulance, a trip to the ER with the paramedics, a bunch of blood tests and a couple of x-rays later, it was determined AJ was fine. Well fine, except for the dislocated shoulder and broken ankle that is. The mental image of seeing a team of doctors nurses and other staff members pulling and yanking at my partner’s arm to try to put it back in place will forever be seared into my brain. And no, I did not instagram that scene. Some things just don’t need to be shared on social media thank you very much.

The next day my talk at BlogHer on branding for creatives was well received. We got great feedback from folks and people were tweeting soundbites about our session. My friend and co-presenter Shauna Sever was a rockstar! We had case studies on awesome bloggers with solid brands, gave 5 questions that every blogger needs to ask themselves to find out what their brand is all about and I even did a good job of embarrassing myself when my cell phone went off in the middle of the session because I had forgotten to turn it off. Go me! I even got a chance to say hi to my pal Amanda of I am Baker. In the meanwhile, AJ was back at our friend’s place, on plenty of painkillers. I hurried back to take care of him afterwards.

In the aftermath of all this, we scrambled to find a new place to stay as the original place I had booked was in a 5-story walk up. Thankfully our friend Sang was out of town and his place, in a high rise, had an elevator. His place is GORGEOUS and the view is spectacular. Equally awesome was the new Samsonite luggage that I got for the trip, because lemme tell you, there’s no way I could have lugged that luggage all by myself if I had to use my old crappy bags.

We enjoyed the rest of our New York trip as much as we could but AJ probably won’t be going back there anytime soon. In the aftermath, we’re slowly getting our lives back on track at home. AJ had surgery on his shoulder and the long slow process of healing has begun. He won’t be back on his bike for awhile, probably 4 to 6 months if the estimates are correct, depending on physical therapy. And that means we’ll also be taking a bit of a break from this fried chicken as well. But at least we all have something to look forward to when AJ is finally healed. Cycling and fried chicken. It can’t come soon enough.

Full disclosure: I’ve teamed up with Samsonite for this blog post as well as their ongoing blog campaign “The New Business” where I discuss what I do for living. Samsonite sent me the luggage for this trip as well as monetarily compensated me for this blog post. That said, all opinions stated above are completely my own.

If you like this easy fried chicken recipe, why don’t you check out some of my other chicken recipes like:
Korean Fried Chicken (they’re baked not fried)
Taiwanese Popcorn Fried Chicken
Korean BBQ Chicken Wings
Pok Pok Fried Chicken Wings
Fried Chicken Skins

And check out some of these other fried chicken recipes from around the web:
Gluten Free Girl’s Tokyo Fried Chicken
Life’s Ambrosia’s Sriracha Fried Chicken
Food Republic’s Hot Bird Mexican Fried Chicken
What’s Gaby Cooking’s Fried Chicken Sliders with Pickles and Slaw
Running to the Kitchen’s Goat Cheese Fried Chicken with Cherry Tarragon Sauce