The Viral Fried Chicken Hack TikTok Cannot Get Behind

How do you cook crispy fried chicken? You fry it obviously. You just toss your chicken in a big vat of oil or lard and fry it until it's golden brown and crisp. That's a perfectly good way of cooking chicken, to be sure, and it's worked without complaint for many years on many recipes. Why fix something that's not broken after all? But in today's world of innovation and modern cooking technology, frying chicken can be done with far more than your average tub of lard and in ways you may have never imagined.

There is one recipe for crispy Southern-style fried chicken, for example, that has you skip the ripping hot oil and instead use your oven. Food Network offers up a recipe that uses your air fryer for a relatively quick and simple way of deep-frying your chicken. There was even one trick someone suggested that involved the use of a microwave to make fried chicken — something met with obviously less than positive commentary (via First We Feast). Whether or not these hacks are better than the traditional ways of preparing fried chicken is up to one's personal taste. It just goes to show how many ways one can "fry" a chicken without having to use a conventional fryer.

There is one hack, however, that has divided many people. It involves a cast iron pan, lots of cooking oil, and paper. Is there something to this hack or is it just another way of starting a grease fire?

TikTok account "youthinkyouknowme99" posted a brief 19-second clip of how she fries her chicken. In summary, she lays parchment paper down inside the cast iron pot before filling it with cooking oils and her chicken. This way, she explains, the chicken doesn't stick to the pot and it makes cleaning the pot much easier. Some seemed impressed by the idea, noting that the hack was both simple and innovative.

"GOD LEVEL," wrote one user. "I'm doing this from now on."

"I'm low-key mad I didn't discover this sooner," said another user.

Some users also said that people didn't like the idea because they believed that the chicken was being cooked with actual notebook paper, instead of parchment paper. One comment even claimed that someone would try this hack using regular paper and wind up burning their house down. Other critics, however, saw the addition of paper to be a waste.

"Ever heard of none stick pans?" wrote user "Maggie."

"bruh all that wax in your food," said "Don Escatt."

Surprisingly enough, according to Bon Appétit, intense heat and a splash of grease or fat can help to prevent the chicken from sticking to the pan, even without the addition of parchment paper. Adding more heat and grease can help unstick chicken as well. This isn't to say, however, that parchment paper, when used correctly, doesn't provide a clean and easy no-stick method, too.