Thanks Paul. Pressure frying is going the way of the Dodo bird. You’re not seeing many new chains or restaurants using it anymore. There’s no longer a competitive advantage unless you’re peddling a brand with a mystique associated with it. As above, people will generally choose the crisp breaded immersion fried over the soft breading of pressure fried in a blind test. The PF chicken had the added advantage of being more tender which is no longer an advantage, if anything a liability with currently sourced chicken for QSR’s. A pullet in the weights above took 16 weeks back in the early days of KFC and Broaster. That’s been reduced to 6 weeks with today’s farming with a much tender flesh for the same size. Commercial pressure fryers now operate between 3 to 8 lbs nominally over the old 15PSI to compensate for the much tender birds. With today’s commercial pack chicken in this size, the standard is pre-brined and phosphate tenderized. When you take all this into account, there is no advantage to a single use pressure fryer with it’s limitations and complexity to an all-purpose immersion fryer.
 
 I think people generally have forgotten the purpose of pressure frying that to some degree emulated milk tenderized, pan fried chicken’s softer texture in a fraction of the time and larger quantities for a restaurant where pan frying in shortening wasn’t feasible unless the customer was willing to spend a lot of time waiting for it.

Has anybody seen Facebook with a feature called face yet? I haven’t. No usage = no trademark. I know they trademarked wall.

Dawn T:  Very good explanation.
 
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

You shouldn’t find Broasted chicken dried out..ever. If someone is selling Broasted chicken, they are licensed by the company and compelled under the terms of agreement to use Broaster’s equipment,breader,and marinade as well as preparation and holding protocol. Broasting is a trademarked brand much in the way KFC is. I don’t know about now, but it was not a franchise, but a product that you bought with an end user agreement. While Broasting is a pressure fried chicken, it’s a proprietary process that you buy into soup to nuts.
 
In any pressure fried method, you’re not going to find large chicken pieces larger then a 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 pound bird sized. Uniformity and batch weight are critical to the process. Unlike immersion/deep fried chicken, most of the cooking cycle  is ~ 12 minutes, the oil temperature doesn’t exceed 230 – 250 degrees after dropping very quickly from around 375-400 degrees b4 placed under pressure and fried very briefly for just a minute or two at the higher temperature. Under normal deep frying, chicken would become very greasy if cooked at that low of a temperature or dips below 300 degrees if overloaded or can’t recover fast enough. The chicken is not technically being fried at that temperature in pressure frying, it’s being steamed with it’s own moisture once under pressure. The exiting steam rapidly cools the oil after the pressure builds. That’s the reason oil doesn’t saturate it. Given the circumstances, it would be hard to do anything large pressure fried like a whole turkey.
 
 

Love fried or “broasted” either one.  Broasted chicken in a restaurant can be super-delicious, but it can be the pits in a convenience store under a heat lamp (dry, dry, dry).  Not sure if if I have a preference (I enthusiastically order both), but I do love pressure-fried chicken.  And I’ll take any part but the thigh.  [;)]

I like fried chicken, but love broasted. Usually very moist and not greasy.

Do you realize what you’re getting into with pressure frying or broasting? I’m not sure if it’s even possible to pressure fry an entire chicken properly, let alone a whole turkey. While most people would readily tell you that they prefer KFC style chicken given the choice, most folks will choose the crisper, immersion fried chicken in my experience. Broasting or pressure frying is pretty much constrained by cooking standardized batches of several head of chicken under rigidly preset conditions. You don’t have the convenience of just doing a few pieces or smaller/larger batch as you do with immersion frying. Size,weight,wash,oil volume, temperature recovery, even brining all contribute to the process. Change one and the entire batch is thrown off. For example, you’re supplier is unable to provide 12% brined pieces today, you’re not going to build pressure as fast with unbrined pieces throwing off the entire cycle. You’re going to have to be even more fastidious with your oil filtering…the list can go on and on. Even your spicing is affected. Spices that work well under immersion frying don’t always work under pressure and can change dramatically. Lots to think about here Tom.
 
You mention Broasting. Do you intend to buy into their proprietary process and their terms & conditions?

Broasted chicken thighs for me any time.  Broasted is not readily available in Knoxville but it is by far my favorite.
 
Paul E. Smith

I haven’t had broasted chicken for years, but enjoyed it when I did.
 
When you say “fried,” though, what do you mean?  Deep fat fried?  Or pan-fried?
 
Give me pan-fried chicken every time.   

PapaJoe8, you could be onto something with that.  Facebook plans to trademark the word face, which seems preposterous, but here it is… 
 
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/24/facebook-plans-trademark-word-face http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/24/facebook-plans-trademark-word-face/

Plb, thanks for the info. Broaster whatever LLC may have a TM but broasted sounds like a way of cooking something. Maybe I could get a TM for “Fried”???
Joe

CTF,what about a deep fried whole Chicken, greens, taters and country gravy and corn bread,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I saw a couple of large panel trucks recently that said “Broasted Chicken” on them.  They actually said “American Broasted Chicken” and they were in Cartagena, Colombia.

Broasted!  With sour cream and pepper.
 
Also, Pollo Campero pressure fries their chicken.  Good stuff, but tiny pieces.