So, this weekend, I told my boyfriend I’d cook him dinner. “What would you like?” I asked, thinking he’d choose one of the man-food things I suggested: pot roast, spaghetti, meatloaf (translation: stuff I can cook with my eyes closed).
“How about fried chicken?”
Gulp. That’s his favorite; of course that’s what he’d want. Problem: I’ve never in my living life ever made fried chicken before. Panicking, I did what all 21st century American women do in moments of culinary terror: I raced to Pinterest.
God, I love the Interwebs.
A quick search of “fried chicken” yielded no less than 14,000 recipes, all of which claimed to be The Best Fried Chicken Evah. Armed with my iron skillet and a ridiculous optimism, I skimmed about 500 of those recipes (I read fast), mixed several of them together, made a list, and headed for the grocery. I bought:
1 package of 5-6 chicken legs
1 package of split chicken breasts
1 1/2 gallon buttermilk
eggs
salt
pepper
all-purpose flour
paprika
sage
thyme
Tony Chachere’s
A yummy looking chicken seasoning blend
Kitchen Thermometer
Peanut Oil
That’s right: Minnie Jackson was wrong: Crisco is not the best thing for frying chicken:
Now, as Minnie’s above comments suggest, fried chicken is the Ultimate Southern Food. You can not screw this up and keep your Texas citizenship, so I was a smidge nervous. Plus, this is His Favorite Food.
No pressure…
I did have my aforementioned Secret Weapon: my iron skillet, which is A Necessity when cooking fried chicken. I also can read and follow directions, and I have both eaten and cooked yummy fried food before. I felt cautiously confident. Then I thought, “Really, how badly could I screw this up?” and panicked again. As a strategic distraction, I also got the stuff to make Kick-Heiny Green Beans and homemade mashed potatoes. At least I knew the sides would be edible.
Once home, I cut the chicken breasts in half (seriously: have all American chickens had boob jobs? They’re all double-Ds. Who can eat one of those things?) I placed the chicken in a 9×13 Pyrex baking dish. Then I made a brine for the chicken:
“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” -Julia Child
2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
1/2 tablespoon pepper (or so…)
I mixed together the brine, poured it over the chicken, covered it with Saran Wrap, stuck it in the fridge, and ignored it until late the following afternoon.
As my charming boyfriend sat at my kitchen island working yesterday, I prepared to fry the chicken:
I mixed the following in a doubled brown paper lunch sack (apparently, the brown paper lunch sack, my friends, is The Secret to perfect fried chicken):
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon chicken seasoning blend
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon (or so) of Tony’s
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/2 teaspoon thyme
Next, I whisked together 4 eggs and about 1/4 cup of buttermilk in a shallow dish. I coated each piece of chicken in the seasoning mixture and set them in a 9×13 baking dish for 5-10 minutes so the seasonings could settle in. At this point, I poured one inch of peanut oil in my iron skillet and attempted to heat it to exactly 350°.
That’s not easy on an electric stove.
Once the oil was about right, I dipped the chicken pieces in in the egg mixture and then dropped two pieces at a time in the brown paper sack, shaking them well. The coated pieces were set in the 9×13 dish. Once all the pieces were coated, I let them rest for fifteen minutes so the batter would form a sort of paste and cling to the chicken.
This is when I realized heating the oil before I battered the meat was big a mistake. Our eyes watered as I turned off the burner, turned on vents, and opened doors trying to cool that stuff down. My poor boyfriend was as terrified as I was: I was burning stuff and hadn’t even cooked anything yet.
Once the oil cooled, I dropped two pieces of dark meat in. (Apparently, one should fry the dark meat before the white meat. I didn’t find out why; I took this instruction on faith: southern women don’t play when it comes to fried chicken.) The key to the whole thing (besides the iron skillet) is maintaining the temperature of the oil-it took constant watching to keep the temperature at 300°, which all the recipes agreed is the optimal temperature for frying chicken. I fried groups of 3-4 pieces for 12-15 minutes, turning halfway through.
The combination of the beans, the potatoes, and that chicken frying made my kitchen smell like Minnie Jackson’s. It was a marvelous smell. When the chicken was done, I transferred the pieces to a clean shallow pan lined with a gazillion paper towels and drained them for 5 minutes or so, then transferred them to an oven-safe dish and placed them in a 200° heated oven.
“I love eating chicken with my bare hands. It makes me want to snarl at people, even more than usual.”
We ate like Southern Royalty. He loved it-even enjoyed a piece cold on his way home, and I hope you will too.
Enjoy.