Chicken kebab turned hard

Question

The chicken kebab which I cooked today was tastier. I had marinated it overnight with salt, tumeric, chilli powder, garam marsala, curd, lemon juice, ginger garlic paste and kebab marsala.

After frying it turned out hard. The one we get in hotels are very tender. What went wrong.. Although I fried in medium high heat.

This was my first try!. I used different parts mix of thigh and breast for cooking. The pieces were not boneless. Also I fried them in oil by heating the oil first at high and then reduced to medium. Approximately one batch I cooked for 10 minutes.

Answer 1

What probably went wrong for the meat to turn hard is that it was overcooked and dried (which happens easily with chicken).

Having said that, you could experiment with reducing temperature/time for better results. Also, a trick I use with chicken kebabs (but I grill them, so this might not work for frying) is that I cover them in yoghurt, which works as a protective layer to keep the moisture inside while the meat cooks.

Answer 2

Your marination was good and fine but you missed two basic fried chicken ingredients egg and flour.

You can use either corn flour or all purpose flour or both, which will make your kebab crisp. And the egg will make a layer covering the chicken pieces which won't allow to pass moisture while frying.

If the chicken pieces loss more moisture then it would become dry. If you don't wish to use egg then you can use gram flour which work excellent with fried chicken. You can read the recipe of Homemade fry chicken to know more details about crisp juicy succulent fried Chicken recipe. https://www.hassanchef.com/2019/11/best-homemade-fry-chicken-recipe.html