Deep-fried poussin with tarragon mayonnaise and potato wedges

The internet can get you into a whole load of trouble. It can put ideas in your head. Dangerous ideas. Like deep-frying a whole turkey. I first stumbled across this novel way of cooking a while ago, whilst scanning YouTube for outlandish food experiments. And it looked amazing. The theatre and spectacle of plunging a huge brined bird, into a bowl of seething gold, in someone’s backyard in small town US of A at Thanksgiving; well, that seemed hard to beat.

Then I stumbled across the warning videos. The ones that showed where this type of cooking can go horribly wrong. Showing what happens to turkeys that have not been duly drained of their salting liquor before making that descent. Boom! You get huge explosions. Water and boiling oil does not mix you see. The subsequent drop of the camcorder and high pitched scream of ‘Oh ma Gaad, Cletus! Are you OK?’ will haunt me forever still.

But like a moth to a flame, I’ve always fancied returning to the idea and when I saw that one of my peers, a rather good baker who resides in Holland, had been getting up to the same tricks with chicken, I felt that I still had to give this method a crack.

With safety in mind though, I decided to scale things down further and pitch my first attempt at ‘whole bird’ deep-frying by using poussin. Poussin that had been brined overnight in buttermilk. Given that this young bird provides a delicate and light meat anyway, you may be wondering why I went through the extra rigmarole. But brining does still add an extra dimension prior to cooking.

You see, by curious osmosis, the whole process is about manipulating proteins by fattening them up and breaking them down a touch before the real cooking gets under way. The reason why some meat, poultry in particular, often comes out dry, is down to that fast shock of initial heat, and this is because the water in the proteins comes flying out, leaving them dense and tight. Having just read that last sentence back to myself, I do realise that this is not a very science-sy way of explaining things but simply put, brining ensures that everything stays nice and juicy.

Anyhow, that was my reason for marinating the poussin in an acidic bath overnight and I am sticking by it. You could source ‘buttermilk’ by the way, but after strenuous research (i.e. asking Twitter) skimmed milk mixed with lemon juice or vinegar also does the trick.

The biggest leap of faith comes to the actual frying and if you own a proper deep-fryer, it is probably best to use that but it might not be big enough. I went down the route of using my beloved deep stock pot, called Barry White, and accomplished a very good result. The poussin was lovely and crisp on the outside but still supremely succulent inside. It left me very happy.

Yes, it’s awesome what you can achieve with a steady hand, nerves of steel and a taped off kitchen. Next time, I think I may even invite my wife in to film me.