It isn’t necessary to marinate your chicken in buttermilk before frying.
If you like a thick crispy crust on your chicken, then go with the buttermilk. The buttermilk will tenderize the chicken to a small degree as well as impart some flavor upon the meat. Most importantly it will allow more flour to stick to the chicken, forming a thick crust that cooks up crisply.
When you fry battered chicken you end up with something like this:
As you can see there is a thick crispy crust that has a lot of texture on this chicken.
You can make fried chicken without buttermilk more easily. Season some flour with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika and dredge the chicken heavily in the flour. The chicken will be coated with a light dusting of flavorful flour and cook up with a thin, even and lightly crisp coating. In this recipe you are frying the skin until it becomes crispy rather than the batter. It will look like this:
This chicken was simple dusted with seasoned flour and fried. No buttermilk was used in this recipe. You can see the the crust is just skin that has been floured. It will be less crisp than the battered chicken but still tasty.
Both versions of fried chicken are delicious. It’s all a matter of preference.
Skinless boneless chicken doesn’t need to be marinated but requires a double dipping in buttermilk. You start by dredging your chicken pieces in seasoned flour and then putting them into a bowl. Pour some buttermilk onto the chicken and stir the ingredients together until the chicken is covered in the sticky batter. Now you will need to dredge the chicken heavily in a bowl of flour. Basically, bury it in flour to ensure that as much flour sticks to the batter as possible. This will create a thick coating on the chicken that cooks up as a crispy crust. This is how chicken fingers and breasts are made in most restaurants.
