Rice flour makes it better. A faithful reader wrote us a lifetime ago about one of our other fried dishes. He suggested using rice flour instead of white flour. We finally try it here in a beer batter coating for chicken. The result is wonderfully crispy!

We start by getting the batter ready. In a large bowl, we combine 1 cup of rice flour and 1 cup of the beer. We stir with a whisk until the batter is smooth and set aside while we start to heat the oil.

We put our Dutch oven on the stove and put a few inches of oil in it for frying. We turn on the heat to medium-high and put a deep-fat fry thermometer into the oil. We want the oil to reach 370° F to start frying.

Meanwhile, we rinse our chicken breasts and cut them into strips with scissors. We set these in a bowl and wash our hands well.

When the oil is almost ready, we check the consistency of the batter. It is a little thick, so we thin it with some of the beer. We want to make it the consistency of pancake batter. In a large, resealable plastic bag, we put the remaining rice flour along with a good pinch of kosher salt.

When the oil is hot enough, we put, using tongs, about 5 strips of chicken into the bag of flour, then into the batter, and finally (carefully) into the hot oil. We set the tongs by the raw chicken and use our “spider” strainer to remove the chicken when cooked. We want the chicken nicely browned and cooked all the way through. This takes 3 to 5 minutes. We remove them to a paper towel lined plate and sprinkle with salt. We repeat the frying with more chicken, waiting each time for the temperature to reach 370° F again. We thin the rice flour batter as necessary with beer as each batch is cooked.

We could have transferred the already cooked chicken into a warm oven, but we do not bother here. The chicken is delicious hot, room temperature, and cold the next day!

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