How This Chili Fried Chicken Became a Smash Hit in NYC
Chef Eric Huang’s Pecking House went from a pandemic pop-up to one of New York’s premiere destinations for fried chicken. By blending flavors from his Taiwanese upbringing with traditional fried chicken, he and his team serve some of the city’s most sought after fried chicken and fried chicken sandwiches.
Transcript
00:00- Great fried chicken obviously
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undefined:undefinedwith pure starches.
00:23And it's very crispy and light.
00:24So it kind of exists like in between that,
00:26it's crispy, it's crunchy, it
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undefined:undefinedchicken temple is built.
00:53The rock, if you will.
00:55If I'm busting out the scale
00:56it means I'm taking it very seriously.
00:57Normally, just kind of, freehand it all.
01:00It's a mixture of these Tajin chilies here
01:02which we dry and toast a little bit.
01:05And then we blend them into a fine powder.
01:07Got citron peppercorns here
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undefined:undefinedit with our warm duck fat.
01:43You know, I think when
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01:55So we're currently in our
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undefined:undefinedin my family's restaurant
02:14in Queens, which was,
02:15you know an abundance of space,
02:16but unfortunately that lease ended.
02:18We needed a temporary home
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undefined:undefinedbut we try our best.
02:32Yeah. So we get these
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undefined:undefinedslide off and slip off.
03:01You know, I'm very much a stickler
03:04about it being a whole chicken
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undefined:undefinedwhere the detail really is.
03:22So that's the 10 pieces right there.
03:24So yeah, we're gonna start
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undefined:undefinedovernight and that way it adds
03:42like a really nice, you
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undefined:undefinedit to be a great product.
03:53I think this is also another part
03:54of probably a more unusual bit
03:56of how we fry chicken and
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undefined:undefinedpotato starch, corn starch,
04:10you know, those are more
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04:23to the fridge at like two in
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undefined:undefinedorders just to give us
04:41like a head start and then
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04:58and nice and tender.
04:59So yeah, he'll fry depending
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undefined:undefinedit would be impossible.
05:10I mean, when we did the delivery operation
05:11we par fried like a 100, 150 orders a day
05:13and then cooked everything
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undefined:undefinedin September, 2020.
05:27It was completely through Instagram
05:28through friends of friends.
05:29And then it kind of just became a thing.
05:30We caught fire with some presses,
05:32and then all of a sudden my
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undefined:undefinedit was 8-9,000 people.
05:47Took us about 10 weeks to get to people
05:48which was challenging.
05:50So this is for our chicken sandwich.
05:52It's a deboned, skin-on chicken thigh.
05:56Chicken thigh is great in general.
05:58Very juicy, has a lot
06:00of beautiful connected
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undefined:undefinedto it in such a way.
06:13And it has that kind of crunchy texture.
06:15It's really something special.
06:16Everybody has a chicken sandwich.
06:17So we were trying to do
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undefined:undefinedkind of dark, sorta caramel.
06:24I know there's a million ways
06:25to make caramel the right way supposedly,
06:27but I don't do any of those.
06:29I just heat up sugar
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undefined:undefinedput together the way they are
06:47and why things are supposed
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undefined:undefinedchicken powder as well
06:59to add the savory.
07:03I've been cooking in fine
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07:13To me, it was about
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undefined:undefinedis generally a menu centered
07:24around Southern tradition
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undefined:undefinedliking the dark caramel
07:34that kinda led me to the pineapple part.
07:36So we take these really nice
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undefined:undefinedbrown, it's caramelized.
07:49This is a charred cabbage slaw,
07:51cabbage and grilled flavors
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undefined:undefinedwe would just toss this
08:04in a huge fire breathing
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undefined:undefinedkicking butt at 5:00 PM.
08:44And here we go.
08:47(chicken frying)
08:49Fine dining was a very
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undefined:undefinedkind of changed a lot
08:57of things for everybody.
08:58We went to this extremely casual,
08:59really approachable food in fried chicken.
09:02It gets you back to your
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undefined:undefinedimpact a chef can have.
09:20And you know how it can
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undefined:undefinedmarinades and methods.
09:33I think everyone can
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