I often get lost scrolling through the various cooking shows and love trying to come up with new ways to make the recipes I see on these shows “healthier.” Just last week I was literally drooling watching one of my favorite chefs make a fried chicken dish, and I knew I had to tackle this one next. The recipe was for Mochiko chicken. I had never heard of this, so I immediately went to Google to find out more about this tasty treat.

Mochiko is a fancy Japanese word that means mochi flour. This type of flour is made from sticky rice that is cooked, then dried, and ground up into a powder. It’s sometimes called sweet rice flour and is a very delicate flour that can not only be used as a breading for chicken but can be used in desserts as well. Unlike traditional flours, it doesn’t have a starchiness to it, and it is a great option for gluten-free recipes.

Having never seen this type of flour in the store, I set out on a mission to find it. While it’s listed on the websites for Safeway, Walmart, and Target, after hitting up multiple local stores, I realized this task was far more difficult than I expected. I wondered if maybe this ingredient could easily be swapped out for another flour, but I didn’t want to take that chance. I mean, it is a Mochiko chicken recipe, after all. I then pondered actually making the flour myself, but luckily, I avoided that test by finding the flour on Amazon. Crisis averted.

It is often tricky to air fry ingredients that are best suited for frying the traditional method, especially when a dredge is involved. Truth be told, I wasn’t quite sure I could make it work, but I was up for the challenge of making a Mochiko chicken recipe and am pretty pleased with the results.

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