It is officially the Fourth of July holiday weekend. My family and I kicked off the weekend by going to my mother’s house (she and my stepfather are out of town for the weekend so we had the place to ourselves) and swimming. I also decided to take along a picnic of fried chicken. Fried chicken is so great as a picnic food because it can be eaten hot, warm, or cold.
As I was taking the chicken out of my refrigerator, I realized that I had yet to do a post on fried chicken. And I was ashamed. What the hell kind of “home cook” am I if I’m not bragging about my abilities to wow your socks off with my fried chicken? Oh, the humanity!
Folks, I am here to remedy the situation. The first wonderful thing about fried chicken is that it doesn’t need a recipe. That’s right, I’m not going to add a nice little formatted recipe for fried chicken. There are so many ways out there to do it that I’m not even going to waste your time. Well, I might waste it a little bit by giving you a few measurements and ingredients on MY particular version, but I completely understand if you want to skip over those parts.
To begin, let us talk about buttermilk. Almost all traditional fried chicken recipes call for marinating the meat in buttermilk. I had always assumed that it was to tenderize the meat and to keep it moist, but for the sake of looking like I know what I’m talking about, I searched the internet to find the reason. While tenderizing the meat is the reason cited the most, others also claim that it flavors the meat, helps the breading stick to the skin, and some other reasons that don’t ring all that true with me.
The fact is, if I have buttermilk I marinate the chicken. If I don’t have buttermilk, it isn’t marinated at all and still tastes awesome. You can take it or leave it. I just stick to the tradition because, hey, generations of grannies can’t be wrong. (You can also marinate your chicken Indian style with yogurt!)
Now let’s talk about which parts of the chicken to fry. If you’re making chicken for many people, I suggest buying either a whole chicken or a whole cut-up chicken and using all parts. I wouldn’t think to mention this if I hadn’t seen more than once someone making fried chicken for a crowd and serving only drumsticks or thighs. No. No. No. Some people like wings. Some people want breast meat. By golly, you better have all parts of that bird fried and accounted for if you want to please everybody.
Now let’s discuss hardware. Fried chicken is made in cast iron skillets. Period. There IS NO VALID DEBATE on this issue. Sure you can make your chicken on a sheet pan in the oven, but it’s not fried chicken, I don’t care how much pretzel crumbs you put all over it. Real fried chicken is made in cast iron.
Every good kitchen should contain at least one well seasoned cast iron skillet. It is a multi-purpose num-num maker. Also, if well cared for, that sucker will outlive your grandchildren. Good cast iron is one of those things bequeathed to younger generations and accepted with pure enthusiasm. Also, don’t treat cast iron cookware like you’d treat all your other cookware. Cast iron is special and needs special love. The internet is full of articles written by people fully prepared to beat you with your own cast iron skillet if word ever got out that you wash it with soap. Get a good skillet, season it, love it, RESPECT it. And make lots of fried chicken with it.
Method. Oh geez. The method is just as varied as the recipe themselves. Do you use a wet or dry coating? Do you fry in vegetable oil, butter, or shortening? It can get crazy.
As for me, I use a dry coating and I fry in canola oil. You can certainly add a few pats of butter to the oil for a little more richness, but I usually leave that out because of all the fat in the chicken skin.
My dry coating is mostly flour. I season the chicken meat directly with salt and pepper because those two things can tend to get lost in a coating and you really want to make sure that the meat is still flavorful. For a whole chicken, I use about a cup and a half of flour. To that I add some onion powder and garlic powder (about a teaspoon of each). I also add just a teeny bit of dried dill (I have a recipe for Chicken Kiev that calls for dried dill in the coating and it’s surprising the little zing it adds).
I’ve known people to use crushed up potato chips or cereal as their coatings for fried chicken. Play with it and have fun. Just make sure that if you make your own dry coating to be careful of ingredients that burn. That chicken has to fry for a while and too much of a delicate ingredient can put the whole dish in the trash.
My own chicken can have a few dark spots from that tiny bit of onion and garlic powder that I add to my coating. It’s not burned, I assure you. Like I said, it has to cook for quite a while to make sure all the meat is cooked through and the coating sometimes can’t take it. It’s a delicate balance. But boy that stuff tastes gooooood.
My grandmother was always nervous about undercooked chicken so she always boiled the chicken before coating and frying it. She would then throw egg noodles in the broth made from boiling the chicken and it made for a damned good meal. I know that the thought of boiling the chicken before frying it horrifies some people, but if you’re nervous about undercooked chicken, it’s a great way to make sure your meat is cooked and reduced the frying time. Sometimes when I get to missing my grandmother, I make that very dish, the chicken with egg noodles, just so I can feel close to her. And it still makes for a damned good meal.
Even if you’re dedicated to be a healthy eater, I really hope that you don’t forget about fried chicken. I don’t expect you to eat it more than once or twice a year, but it has such history in our country. Its grassroots run deep and many of us who were born to “salt of the earth” families treasure it as a family tradition. Like apple pie and hotdogs, fried chicken is AMERICAN.
Happy Fourth everybody. Enjoy!
