Why is my breading not sticking to chicken?

Why is my breading not sticking to chicken?

The most common reasons breading doesn’t stick is that:

You didn’t properly dry the meat.
You didn’t put a starch coating on the meat before dredging.
Your oil wasn’t properly heated.
With the dry part, too much water on the meat will result in the chicken hitting the hot water, flashing into steam and blowing off the coating. If you didn’t starch first (which isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does help), it may lack the gelatinous starchy glue (starch turns to glue) which helps. There are many different ways of frying (some of which do not use a starch dredge first), which is fine. When I use buttermilk, I don’t use starch, but I still make sure to get all of it off before applying the egg batter + final bread coating (flour, cracker crumbs, Cap’n Fucking Crunch**, bread crumbs, a mixture of them all).

Lastly, if you [a] drop that chicken into the oil that isn’t properly heated or [b] you drop a whole mess of bird parts in there, its temperature will drop and then as it coasts up to the proper temperature, the oil will have a chance to soak into the breading before the water inside the bird starts to flash into steam. Why is this important? Converting the water to steam when frying is important as the escaping steam keeps the oil at bay, preventing it from soaking into the bird, combining with water and then converting your breading to a soggy mess or allowing it to fall off the bird.

Lastly, remember, even if you are a professional cook, shit still happens from time to time. Food isn’t a 100% perfectly consistent product. Changes in processing methods, food, weather, and shipping alter the structure of the food significantly and may result in the occasional, “Oopsie!” that even the best of us cannot perfectly avoid 100% of the time.