Chicken and waffles is a dish where the variables sit at a specific distance from each other and the cook's job is to hold that distance. The chicken must be hot; the waffle must be crisp; the gap between those two states is the challenge. Joey Ward runs Southern Belle and Georgia Boy in Atlanta — both Michelin recommended — and makes food that holds tension like that for a living.
Ward brined his chicken pieces for four hours in a buttermilk-and-hot-sauce solution, then dredged in a seasoned flour with a tablespoon of baking powder per cup — leavened dredge gives more surface area and more crunch per square inch. He fried at 325°F for a full twelve minutes rather than a shorter high-heat fry, building crust gradually while the interior came up slowly to 165°F. His waffle batter used malted milk powder, which increases surface browning through Maillard reaction without added sugar.
Two Michelin-recommended rooms in Atlanta, and Bobby Flay learned about malted milk powder the hard way.
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