Marinate the chicken:

Two to twenty-four hours before eating, prepare the marinade. Mix the yogurt, mustard, paprika, salt, garlic, and lemon juice in a big bowl.

Slice the chicken into lengthwise strips. Think chicken tenders. Add this to the bowl of yogurt and mix everything together. I do this with clean hands, but you can use a large fork or spoon. Cover and refrigerate, 2-24 hours.

Bring chicken to room temperature before cooking. Cold chicken will spit and fry unevenly.

At cooking time, heat the oven to 200F/90C.

Open your windows and turn on the oven fan. Have a spatter screen, oven mitts, and heat-proof platter or tray ready.

If you have a nonstick pan you trust, go for it. Otherwise, I feel cast iron is the ideal cooking vessel. Once the chicken is cooked, it will release from the pan. I use a 10-inch/25cm cast iron pan. Turn heat to medium high. Pour a generous amount of oil in; you are shallow frying. While the oil heats, turn to breading your chicken.

You can mix the flour and paprika in a giant bowl or large shallow dish, meaning all the chicken goes in at once, but I prefer breading, and frying, in relays. The choice is yours. Shake a goodly amount of flour into your chosen dish–around a half-cup (250 grams). Add a teaspoon each of salt and hot paprika. I use a pasta bowl, which allows breading a few pieces of chicken at a time. Remember making mudpies in the sandbox? That’s what you’re going for. I always make a gloppy mess of this, but I am a middle-aged woman with joint disease in a crappy home kitchen, not a professional cook.

Using tongs, lower a piece of chicken into the pan. It should sizzle. You want frying without burning. You may have to adjust the heat to find the ideal temperature. Once the chicken is ready–about five minutes a side–it will release easily. Don’t feel bad if you lose some of the coating; just prise it out with a spatula and add it to the platter (or eat it). Keep on cooking. You’ll probably need to add a little oil. You’ll also need to add more flour as you bread the chicken.  Cook, flip. Keep cooking. You’ll find the sweet spot. Taste testing is encouraged, just don’t burn yourself.

The cooked chicken can rest in the oven, unharmed, for about 90 minutes while you clean up.

Serve fried chicken with tortillas or other flatbreads, your favorite pickles, Kewpie Mayonnaise, Huy Fong hot sauce (Lawson prefers Chinese Chili Crisp, which is also wonderful), thinly sliced onion, lettuce (Lawson shreds hers, I don’t bother), and tomato slices.

Fried Chicken Wraps are delicious hot, cold, or at room temperature. They will keep, refrigerated in a covered container, up to 5 days. While you can freeze the chicken, the fried coating will become soggy, which ruins all your hard work.

It is best to reheat the chicken in a toaster oven or low oven to recrisp the exterior, but a microwave works in a hurry.

Notes:

Frying isn’t set it and forget it cooking. It’s a bit like making pancakes: the first pieces aren’t perfect. (They taste good, and you don’t need to throw them out.) Put the phone down. If you need to step away from the stove, turn the heat down. Make sure little hands and/or pets can’t get hurt. As mentioned above, I had a hot-oil burn. It’s not something I’d care to repeat. Open windows and turn on your oven fan, if you have one.

Variation:

I haven’t tried this, but I’m going to. Try seasoning the chicken with chaat masala and ground pomegranate instead of hot paprika. A hit of ground cumin would be delicious, too. Use lime instead of lemon, and pita or flatbread instead of tortilla. Lime pickle and mango chutney. Rice.

And by all means, buy Cook, Eat, Repeat.