The Edgy Veg

Vegan Fried Chicken with Skin

I’m going to show you how to make vegan fried chicken with tofu skin (yuba) in under 30 minutes! This vegan fried chicken is a crispy and juicy copycat with chicken texture and flavour! Why do we get it to taste like fried chicken? Using my recipe for vegan KFC seasoning and dredge, as well as our secret “meat” ingredient being tofu skin, aka yuba which you can find in many health, Asian or international grocery stores! If you don’t have access to tofu skin, you can make my vegan chicken drumsticks recipe using rice paper instead, or my vegan KFC chicken recipe.

If you’re looking for a copycat fried chicken recipe that’s vegan, you’re going to love this one! The base of this recipe (without the breading stage) is also gluten-free if you need a GF version!

Related Recipe: Vegan Drumsticks with Rice Paper Skin

Vegan Fried Chicken

Vegan Fried Chicken with Tofu Skin

Sometimes, my best recipes are a result of the inspiration I take from years of my own recipe development. A while back, I made Okonomi Kitchen’s Salmon Recipe. The recipe calls for tofu skin, soybean skin or yuba (many names for the same product). I hadn’t tried this ingredient before and it fueled inspiration for me to cook with it on my next vegan chicken recipes. I also recently received a package from Faux Bones, which made me so excited to make realistic vegan meats with their wooden “bones” as the base as I was just using popsicle stocks or bamboo spoons for chicken drumsticks.

The star of this recipe is tofu skin, beancurd skin, soybean skin, or yuba is an ingredient made from soybeans. When boiling soy milk, a film or skin forms on the liquid surface and they are collected and dried into yellowish sheets known as tofu skin. They are decently high in protein as well as being able to soak up any flavour you add it, helping this replace meat in many recipes.

Related Post: 15+ Vegan Chicken Recipes

Vegan Fried Chicken with Tofu Skin Recipe

INGREDIENTS FOR FRIED CHICKEN (VEGAN):

KITCHEN EQUIPMENT:

Full Recipe Down Below!


5.0 from 5 reviews
Vegan Fried Chicken with Skin
 
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
I'm going to show you how to make vegan fried chicken with tofu skin in under 30 minutes! This vegan fried chicken is a crispy and juicy chicken copycat.
Author:
Recipe type: Main
Cuisine: Vegan
Serves: 8-10 drumsticks
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. In a large casserole or shallow dish, place soybean skin sticks and pour boiling water over them. Let them soak for 10 minutes, or until soft(ish).
  2. Remove from the water, squeeze out any excess liquid and cut each stick into 3 pieces.
  3. In a medium-large saucepan add 3 cups water, bouillon, mushrooms seasoning or msg, nutritional yeast and poultry seasoning, mix to combine. Add soybean skin bring to a boil.
  4. Cover, and simmer on medium-high heat for about 5-10 minutes, or until soybean skin is very soft.
  5. Remove the soybean skin from the broth mixture and place it into a colander to cool slightly. Reserve broth, and set aside.
  6. When the soybean skin is cool enough to handle, divide them equally so you can end up with 8-10 drumsticks.
  7. Soften a sheet of rice paper in the broth and place it on a work surface or clean counter.
  8. One at a time, take whatever "bone" you're using and wrap one strip of soybean skin around it, continue until you've used all the soybean skin from that group.
  9. Now, wrap put the entire drumstick with the softened piece of rice paper. This should hold it all together, if it does not—use a second piece of softened rice paper.
  10. Set drumstick aside, and repeat with remaining "bone" and soybean skin.
  11. Now, prepare the dredge from my KFC recipe (soy sauce, pepper, aquafaba, and 1 tbsp cornstarch) in one bowl and seasoned flour frommy KFC recipe (flour, ¼ cup cornstarch, baking soda, baking powder, thyme, basil, oregano, celery salt, black pepper, mustard powder, paprika, garlic powder, ginger, white pepper and MSG) in another, and heat ¼ cup oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat, or heat a deep fryer, or air fryer.
  12. One at a time, coat a drumstick in the dredge liquid and then coat in the flour mixture. Press flour into the rice paper to coat well, dust off any excess, and place on a wire cooling rack to rest. Repeat.
  13. In batches, fry vegan chicken for 2-3 minutes per side, or until golden and crispy. Remove from the hot oil or fryer and place on a wire cooling rack to crispy up and allow excess oil to drip off. Repeat with remaining vegan chicken.
  14. If using an air fryer: in batches, spray each drumstick with cooking spray and cook at 375 for 5 minutes, or until golden & crispy.
  15. Serve with your favourite sauces or dips, as well as your favourite side. I like to enjoy with coleslaw, mashed potatoes or corn pudding.
Nutrition Information
Serving size: 1 drumstick Calories: 275 Fat: 22.7g Carbohydrates: 10.8g Sugar: 0.7g Fiber: 1.3g Protein: 5.7g

Vegan Fried Chicken Edgy Veg Recipe


Hey I’m Candice aka The Edgy Veg – I veganize popular food recipes for vegans, plant-based diets, eco-conscious eaters & people who are trying to eat more plants over… y’know animals or their by-products. I hope you enjoy this tasty vegan recipe!


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Made this recipe? Let me know what you think by leaving a ★★★★★ star rating & comment below. It truly helps me & I really appreciate any support! Feel free to share your food photos on social and tag me @edgyveg so I don’t miss it! 

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  • yo! The Amazon link to the mushroom seasoning is broken. Do you have a different link?

  • can these be frozen before cooking

    • I would not recommend it as rice paper changes texture when it’s frozen. You can store them in the fridge for up to 5 days!

  • Hi can I make these and freeze these and cook them later? If so how do I defrost them correctly? These look really good.

  • Hi, this looks really good honestly does this taste like chicken.
    You have any idea to make lots of vegan steak?

  • Hi! I made this and it was good but the taste slightly reminded me of Mr.Noodles chicken flavor. (That could be me). The texture was great! Where did you get your tofu skin? I got mine from walmart but they were too short so I couldn’t wrap them around my sticks.. Because of this I had to double wrap the tofu skin in the rice paper and make rolls. Also I didn’t have celery salt, white pepper or msg (but I used sea salt). My husband wanted to know what kind of oil you used for your recipe. If you have any advice or suggestions that would be great. Thank you 😊

    • Cortney Lesperance says:

      Hi!

      So I remade this recipe, still with some missing ingredients 😅 but I did not dredge them (maybe I should have.) I didn’t wrap them in skin either. I just deep fried them and holy crap they were delicious! I know it’s not “fried chicken” like the recipe but it’s still delicious and a great snack!

  • insanely good. this is the exact texture I want in vegan chicken. great version of it :))

  • The YouTube video for this got me super excited to try it, the chicken skin was incredible.

  • This was so cool!! Tested the recipe on Sunday to make it for Thanksgiving and it’s awesome!! Can’t wait to shock my family with vegan fried chicken!

  • Found through tiktok….. this recipe is amazing. thank you for making vegan meat not boring

  • Yolanda Quimby says:

    Hi!
    Can these be air-fried? I seriously have to cut down my oil consumption and I don’t wanna have to miss out on these!!

  • This recipe was actually incredible. I can’t wait to make more of it!

  • Doreen Fish says:

    Where to purchase yuba skin and what does it look like? Can you share a pic? Thank you

  • Jennifer says:

    These look so good! Question: did you use the full size faux bones or the drumette size? I can’t wait to try these.

  • Could I make a large batch of these and freeze them once I get the skin on and batter and fry as needed? and if so would they require a defrost before frying?

  • Did you delete the original comments I left on your website??? You can’t take criticism? You can’t even apologise?

    STOP STEALING RECIPES FROM WOC.
    It doesnt take much to give credit!

    • I haven’t deleted your comments, they go through my website before being shown publicly to avoid any spam commenting from appearing

  • So, are you not going to give credit to the WOON HENG, the original creator of this recipe? Just another mayosapien stealing and benefiting from the labor of WOC.

    YOU ALWAYS NEED TO GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

    • Hi there, in my post you can see that I explain where my inspiration came from, I tried one of Okonomi Kitchen’s recipes and received wooden bones from a brand, so I put them together in this recipe. I’m sorry if it was not clear where my intentions were. I credit and link all sources I use to make my recipes.

    • Clearly the recipes are not the same. The method is even different, and the bone sticks can be purchased for the purpose of creating a drum stick. Chill out.

    • Funny you think this. The recipes are completely different. Silly how you think Woon Heng came up with this concept. Also all food bloggers and chefs take inspiration from other food bloggers and chefs. Go ask Woon Heng where she got her recipe from. Pretty sure she will say that she got the inspiration from a dream. Silly vegans always so judgmental. 😅😅

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