Hi, I’m Chef Jack Erwin when your food connections host.

This episode we will be bringing you tips on how to make a signature, fried chicken sandwich, and world famous onion rings.

Stay with us.

Hi everybody, we’re here again today with food connections and we have as our special guest today, Chef Bryan Miller from Lansing Corners, bar and Grill in here in Austin.

Welcome, Brian.

Hey, how’s it going?

Good, how are you?

Pretty good.

Tell us about how you got into cooking and how you got into being at Lansing Corners.

Well, uh, basically I wanted to own a restaurant since I’ve been a little kid and, you know, restaurant since I’ve been a little kid and, you know, I I worked at Frito Lay years back before I bought it.

I drove by it twice a week and saw a building and I saw an opportunity and now I’m there..

I realize that it’s more important to be a cook in your own restaurant than anything else.

Oh, yes.

So had you been cooking for a long time?

Yeah, you know, I always I cook here and there and I dabble, and I’m always really good at it and good at following recipes and, you know, coming up with stuff is really hard, but, you know, I can always do that.

But you’re kind of a natural natural cook then, and know what needs what when you’re cooked.

kind of how it’s cooked, what’s not cooked and all that.

And how long have you had Lansing Corners bar and grilled?

We’re going on three years in Labor Day.

You are a co owner, is that right?

Along with Steve Patterson.

We’re very glad to have you here today and anxious to see what you’ve got for us.

All right.

I’m gonna um be cooking our Minnesota hot chicken sandwich, and I call it Minnesota hot because it’s really not hot.

we’re in Minnesota, so naturally, you know, it’s hot to everybody else.

Right, right, then I’m also gonna do our famous onion rings, which, you know, it’s kind of a staple of ours that everybody comes in and gets.

All right, so, the first thing that you want to do when making a fried chicken sandwich is you want to get your fryer oil already.

You gotta get it heated, you gotta make sure that, you know, when you have a thermometer here, you stick it in, it registers at about 350 degrees, the less oil you have, it can be slightly higher than that because it’s going to average out the temperature and you’re gonna lose a little bit of temperature once you put something in it.

Okay, so next step is we’re gonna take a raw fillet chicken breast, and then we’re going to use a seasoned flour concoction.

then we’re gonna dip it back in the buttermilk and then and then we’re going to dip it again in here to create a nice coat for it and a nice crust for when we dip it in here, and then you get that crunchy coating.

What kind of seasonings did you put in your flour today, Brian?

Uh, so it’s a four parts flour, one part corn starch.

The corn starch is what gives it the crunch.

And then you also want to add four tablespoons of a salt pepper mix and all the salt pepper mix I always say are always a four to one mix of salt to pepper.

There’s two tablespoons of paprika, and that gives it kind of the it doesn’t really have much of a flavor itself, but it gives us the nice color and then a nice depth of flavor.

And then you’re gonna want some kind of garlic.

so, you know, I use garlic powder, can also use like a garlic salt if you really want to, you can use fresh garlic.

It doesn’t really matter as long as it mixes in evenly.

So.

So, you want to start with your chicken breast?

Now, there’s a technique to it.

When you put it, you want to coat it evenly and flour, but not overly too much.

And then you want to take your fist, put it in a fist and you’re gonna want to slowly massage it and use your fist as a tenderizer to flatten it out a little bit.

So you didn’t tenderize these at all or poundies at all beforehand?

Is that correct?

Okay.

Now, if it’s being a little picky and it’s not flattening easy, you can take like a fork and not the smooth size of the breast, but the the fiber side, you can just take and poke a bunch of holes in it and then it’ll allow you to to move it a little better.

Great yeah.

All right.

So the next step is you’re gonna wanna get this buttermilk, so you can use a low fat, you can use full fat, you can use a condensed buttermilk mix.

All that works.

I added some hot sauce in there to give it a little extra.

You know, we are making a Minnesota hot chicken sandwich.

and then whenever you’re doing this and putting something in a liquid like that you’re gonna batter, you want a minimize the amount of liquid that’s excess on it, because the end uh breading won’t adhere to it as well.

So then, the next step, you know, we bring it back to the flour mix that we have here.

coat it nice.

You’re gonna wanna press on it, you’re wanna get it to adhere to it as good as possible.

I’m packing it down here.

Again and again, getting it nicely coated.

and then, I’m gonna bring it over here and set it in my deep fryer.

Now Jackson.

Oh boy.

Okay.

Here we go, someone.

Step one.

All right put it in there.up.

All right.

And yep, coat it up.at it a little bit.

Yep, and then if you’re gonna wanna take your fist and you wanna squish it down.

not so hard that you break it apart, but.

Well, I am pretty strong.

So I understand.

But yeah, you can kind of feel where it needs to be pressed a little bit, right?

it’sense.

yeah, on certain areas, of course, you can sort of feel that.

shake a little extra off.

Yep, and then completely coat it.

All right.

And now you’re gonna wanna let it drip dry for a second year.

Okay.

And back again.

Back again here.

Get it good and thickly coated.

Well, all right.

It gets good and impacted in there.

Yeah.

All right, and then now you’re gonna wanna set it gently into the fryer.

All right.

And now, the moment the truth, we drop her in there.

And now this is probably gonna take anywhere from seven to ten minutes.

Here’s about the number one kitchen tip that I could give.

And that is when using a recipe, whether it’s baking, cooking, whatever you’re doing, read through that recipe before before you start because there’s nothing worse than starting a recipe.

Read the first line.

You’re starting to make it.

And then all of a sudden read a little further, oh my golly, I missed a step or I I should have done this altogether.

So read through, familiarize yourself with that recipe before you get going.

And it’s going to make it much, much easier for you.

I think it’s probably happened to all of us sometime and and it’ll make you think, oh man, I should have just I should have looked ahead.

This is going to make your recipe turn out much better.

I see you don’t have any tiny little bugs.

We want a good sized bump for these, right?

We use the bigger ones because we make big sandwiches.

and that’s kind of like our signature deal at Lansing Corners, sure.

You know, even our burger are a half a pound, so, you don’t mess her up.

All right, so now the butter looks like it’s starting to melt.

The best indicator of a hot pan is melted butter.

You can burn butter, and it’s it’s not super off putting, but it’s not ideal, so.

And these chicken that are not, you don’t have to do anything with those, they don’t have to be turned in the oil or anything like that, just wait until they’re the desired color that you want.

is that right?

got it.

So, if you’re at home trying to do it in a skillet like this, you you’re not going to want to fill it all the way with oil because it’ll oil over, so you go about halfway and then halfway through, you flip it.

And that’s how you would do it at home.

You can take this, and if you want to get it nice and buttery, just take some of the melted butter on the bun, soak it up.

I don’t know if you could see that.

You recommend doing this this way with the butter in the panru rather than buttering the bun, and then just doing a dry pan.

Yeah, it it gets a little bit more even this way.

Sometimes you gotta shake them, make sure they’re not sticking to your basket.

Looking good already.

Wow.

Now, will they, will those breasts float when they are done?

Yes.

Okay.

Some things do in the fryer, they’ll they’ll float when they’re done.

You can’t go just by that, I know, I know.

The best way they tell what they’re done is to grab with the thermometer.

So I don’t know if you can see this, but it’s bubbling up and that’s what you want about the sizzle.

Right, right.

And if there is uh what use um is this one of your big sellers At Lansing Corners?

I would say so.

Burgers are our number one seller, but somebody wants chicken, this is our number one chicken sandwich.

So it’s tough, though.

a lot of people don’t get the jokes, so they’re like, I don’t want a hot sandwich, and then we’ll like well, it’s not actually hot.

You prepare these to order like we just did?

Yes.

All right.

That’s something people wouldn’t expect.

Yeah, I mean, because so many places you go, you get a frozen product, you know what I mean, but if you are doing these just like we just showed.

This is absolutely the process order.

It is like, wow, you know, that’ doesn’t get much pressure, so that’s straight, you know.

Yeah, we always have raw chicken breasts.

you know, we always make our batter fresh once or twice a day, depending, depending on how busy we are.

If you’re at home, you’re not super familiar with cooking or toasting, you can always cheat and check.

and then just know that if it’s not crispy, it’s not done.

Uh huh.

Sure.

You can actually turn it up a little bit.

So you can start to see that the chicken is starting to float here just a little bit.

I, I would guess at least a couple more minutes.

Get a nice color.

looks really good.

So, um how long do you recall how long Lansing Corners has been opened?

I heard a bunch of stories.

I think the big Lansing Corners, the supper club opened.

I want to believe in the 60s, but um and that was a supper club until about 2005, I think, is when they officially closed.

and then it sat vacant for like five or six years.

and then it became an event center, and then it became a bunch of different things, you know.

And I think there was two or three owners since then, and then me and Steve decided we’re just gonna do a bar and grill and But you still have the event area, right?

events, yeah, no, that’s a good thing as all.

Well, you know, it’s funny, and I don’t remember if I’ told you this before when I’ve been out there, but I was an the assistant chef out there in the 70s, like the late 70s.

and so because I had worked for the family for a long time at another location and that, so I went out there for, I don’t know, a year and a half or something like that.

So that was so I used to be in that kitchen as well.

I’m sure it’s changed a lot.

I haven’t peeaked in there, absolutely.

I’m sure it’s changed a lot.

So I’m gonna it doesn’t hurt to check the temperature of your chicken.

Right.

Oh, they look good.

And I don’t wanna just make sure you get it right in the center.

And you’re shooting for what temperature right?

You’re shooting for at least 165.

Right.

No, I don’t wanna hurt anybody’s feelings, but that piece that I did that you’re doing right now kind of looks better than the other one I think I feel.

It looks a little better than the other one.

one I mean, but I don’t I don’t I mean that in the nicest way.

I really do.

All right.

They are done.

Oh, okay.

Perfect.

All right, so now we just have a little bit of toast on the bun.

Not too much.

I would say that’s probably even good enough.

We don’t like to do heavy toast on our bones.

Right, right.

Just a little bit of crisp crispness probably got another 30 seconds.

So yeah, we can start doing this here.

actually, I’ displayed.

So the thing about a hot chicken sandwich is it’s inspired by a southern chicken sandwiches and they always got a little bit of mayo and some pickles on there, so you gotta do that.

that’s a little bit of pickles.

Perfect, so that one’s set up.

Oh, look at that color.

Gee this.

Now what do you have here?

Okay, so what makes it Minnesota hot is maple cereal.

and whatever your favorite hot sauce is, we like to use Sriracha, and we like to use like a four to one, three to one ratio.

You can make it hotter, you can go 50, 50, if you’re really adventurous, you can go m mostly hot sauce and a little bit of maple syrup just to give it a little sweetness.

or you can just omit that if you really want to, but it’s just up to you, however you want to cover your chicken, but this is really popular the way we do it, so.

The crucial thing is, this is kind of like the last step, and you want to serve it pretty closely after you do that, because it’s gonna make it soggy eventually.

It’s such a nice presentation, too, with the syrup dripping down a little bit of the plate.

I like that presentation a lot.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, I’ll just finish up the other one.

I guess I’ll use this here.

All right.

You don’t have to get spread perfectly because it’ll squish out.

Sure.

That’s okay.

If it’s squishing out, it means you put enough on.

That’s great.

There you go.

Beautiful.

Oh, boy, oh boy.

I’m hungry.

Yeah, I can’t wait.

I cannot wait.

Here’s a little tip about overs salting.

If you’ve ever over salted your soup or stew, take a peeled potato and drop it in and cook that potato in there for a while, and that is going to absorb all that excess salt, and you will be surprised how that will save the day for you.

Okay, so, Brian, now you’re gonna show us how to make Lancing Corners world famous onion rings.

I can’t wait to find out how you do these and make these so good.

So go ahead and show us how you begin.

All right.

One thing about onion rings is, once I show you, you’re gonna be like, wow, that was easy.

Okay.

The hardest part is cutting the onion, but once you learn the technique, it’s actually really easy.

So there’s a couple ways to do it, but the way I do it, I got it.

As I start on one side, the side with basically the roots, and then you flip it.

and then you look for the edge here, and then you peel the outer layer off.

So you get it to a nice taut skin here, if it’s kind of like a a what a shrunken skin on there, then you gotta keep going till you get the tight skin.

Otherwise, otherwise you’re gonna have some flimsy onion rings.. All right, so, everybody does this a little bit different, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it, and Lancing Corners, we like to give pretty hefty onion rings, so we go half inch to 3/4 inch.

and we’re just up and down.

Now, they should just kind of fall apart like this?

Well, they sure do.

Yeah.

They come right apart real nice.

and rings.

imagine that.

And then what you if you get one that’s kind of tough like this one, you’re not gonna use the middle so you can put pressure on the middle and then slowly get to the ones that you need.

Pretty easy.

Perfect.

All right, and just like that we got a bunch onion rings.

All right.

So, now they got your onions cut, you’re gonna wanna make your batter.

The nice thing is, the special flour for the chicken is exactly the same as the special flour for the batter.

Can I just interrupt real quick?

Now, you saved rather than use the same flour that you mixed the ch that we mix the chicken in, you saved this ahead of time, so there’s no crosscontamination like that.

So you reserved this ahead of time for your onions, right?

Exactly.

Yeah, that’s good, good.

And so it’s the same ratio, it’s one cup, it’s four to one.

you’ one cup of flour or four cups flour, one cup of corn starch, and then you got your four tablespoons of salt pepper mix, you got your two tablespoons.

have a garlic salt or garlic powder, and you got two tablespoons of paprika, so now we get to add the fun stuff.

So, you can have onion rings a bunch of different ways.

like you can make them thinner or thicker, or bread, people call them.

I try to shoot for right in the middle.

but as you add beer, you’re gonna wanna whisk it slowly, not too much because it’ll cake your whisk and then you’re just gonna have a mess, but I don’t know if you can see this here.

Hold on like that.

So, we’re adding and whisking at the same time.

The good news is if I make it too thin, you can always add back flour, just a little bit.

If for some reason somebody didn’t have beer in the house or didn’t want to use beer, what might you use as a substitute?

Because it’s got, you know, I guess it’s got the carbonation and stuff like that.

I don’t know right off what I would recommend for that.

You know, I thought about this, and um you can make batter with using water, but I don’t know, I just this adds kind of an element that water doesn’t give you.

Yeah, what about what soda water work?

Yes, with a little bit of fizz?

I just.

I don’t know.

okay.

So, yeah, I just made a correction there.

You make it just a little bit too thin and you just add some flour back and it thickens it right up, because flour is the most flexible ingredient in there.

So a little bit too much flour isn’t gonna hurt it.

So you want a certain consistency, so this is still just a little bit thin.

So we’re just gonna add just a little bit more flour.

Because you want to stick to the onions certain thickness, okay.

Okay.

All right, so, could you just give you a little bit of resistance from here, but you should also have like a string coming up.

See, oh, there’s a string coming up from it, so it like never really disconnects.

I would call that good.

All right.

So, give that to Jack.

Now, here’s the fun part.

So, you always want if you’re gonna do this in a deep fryer, you want your basket to be down, because you want to what we call swim your onion rings, because otherwise, if you don’t, it’s gonna stick to the bottom, and then you’ll never get them out of there and they won’t be a ring once you do.

So good point.

Now this is a small fryer, I can’t really fry a bunch at a time, but we’ll try, you know, a few here.

It really don’t take very long.

You’re flowering them in plain flower.

So you’re gonna wanna put them in plain flower and it helps the batter stick, because it dries them out just just a little bit, kind of like the same with the chicken, you know, you just want you want your wet batter to stick.

All right, so we can throw them in here.

Let’s put this one is for.

So you wanna make sure you’re coating them all the way in batter.

and then, I would just bring this up here.

So right as you pull them out of the batter, you wanna put them in the oil.

So you get the most thickness out of there.

And then, so if they want to stick at the bottom, you just give it a little jerk.

and then they come right up.

Again, if you don’t have a deep fryer, you can use a pan.

It’s actually way easier to use a pan or a pot for onion rings.

You know, you can already see them kind of puffing up the coating kind of puff up.up, which is the good part, of course.

So I really don’t take very long to cook.

you know, I would say anywhere from one to three minutes, depending on, you know, how hot you have your fryer running.

and just a couple, 10, 20 degree difference can make a minute or two difference.

Okay.

This one’s done.

Oh, look at that.

This one’s done.

Well, that couldn’t have been easier.

No.

Of course, you did all the work, but still that couldn’t have been easier.

I’m really anxious to try These, so what do you think?

in, yeah.

Cool down just a little bit for us?

Cool.

Oh, yeah.

Let me make a little spot here.

Okay, so we’ve got some Lancing Sauce here and You want me to cut one or you?

Yeah, that’s probably best, huh.

Thanks.

Easier to dip.

Did you hear that crunch?

Oh, boy.

Here we go.

Yeah, Those are really, really good, horrible sauce.

I love.