Can You Make Broasted Chicken at Home?

 I once ate broasted chicken. It looked to me like a deep-fry presser cooker of some kind was used. Can I do this sort of thing at home? P.S. I have looked in cookbooks and have searched the Web with no luck.

 OK, you people always say you search the Web, but did you never think to look for Broaster.com? From that site, you will learn that "Broaster" and "Broasted" are registered trademarks of the Broaster Co. of Beloit, Wisc.; that it has been broasting chickens since 1954; that it is not only the process of frying chickens under pressure, but includes a special marinating process; and that it is NOT available to home cooks. The Broasters (frying equipment) and the seasonings are sold only to restaurants and others in the food trade, so Broasted chicken is available to you only when you dine out.

The Broasting process makes chicken that has the taste of fried chicken, but is moister and less greasy. According to the company, Broaster Chicken has "a crispy, nutty golden-brown coating,… tender and juicy deep down to the bone." The company says its pressure-fried chicken has up to 44 percent more moisture than the leading brand of "open" fried chicken, and 40 percent to 70 percent less fat and fewer calories.

We were going to say that we had seen someone selling broasters at a small home show in Maine some years back, but now we know that the person was a fraud — certainly not selling a genuine Broaster (but his chicken sure tasted good).

We put the more general question of whether you can safely pressure-fry chicken at home to the folks at Kuhn Rikon, the makers of some of the leading pressure cookers on the market. Their response: "We do not recommend deep-fat frying or 'broasting' in our pressure cookers." But then they add, "Never use more than 1/4 cup of oil in the pressure cooker when preparing food. Fat can be raised to a much higher temperature than water and the danger of being burned is very high when using large quantities of oil."

So the long-winded answer is that if you exercise reasonable caution, find an appealing fried chicken recipe, and fire up the pressure cooker with a small amount of oil, you can probably produce something not unlike the genuine, real-McCoy Broasted chicken.

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