The wife (bless her heart) got me a Lodge Chicken Fryer for Christmas. All these posts about fried chicken on this board are about fast food fried chicken.
Doesn’t anybody make this stuff at home any more?
Sheila Ferguson (former lead singer for the Three Degrees) wrote one of the best books on Soul Food cooking I have ever read. Her recipe for Fried Chicken goes on for two full pages just describing how to tell the doneness of the chicken by the way it sound in the fryer.
I prepared this recipe once many years ago, but now that I have this fryer I gonna do it again. Probably make collards to go with it…and black eyed peas.
It is a 2-3 times a year event here that the kids and the neighbors look forward to. With the SuperBowl around the corner… I should get my act together. Thomas Keller recipe for the brining and the traditional fried chicken and then I ‘wing’ it for the spicy chicken. I still follow the 24 hr brine, the buttermilk, and the peanut oil for all fried chicken.
Don’t forget to get the waffle iron out!! It is a magical combo.
Is that Edna Lewis recipe from one of her books?
I have The Taste of Country Cooking and In Pursuit of Flavor and it doesn’t seem to be in either one of those.
I believe it was first published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by her protege (and caretaker the last several years of her life), Scott Peacock, who served it on Tuesday nights only at Watershed in Decatur, GA.
Scott really knows how to make some chicken.
Different schools however on the best chicken.
Deep fried versus pan fried in lard/ham fat like Scott.
I like both.
I think deep fried is easier and more consistent, but I think pan fried when it comes out right is a hair better. You get little brown bits around the edge that you don’t get with deep fried. Like you, I enjoy both.
My mother had a way of making fried chicken every week that when I moved out at 18 years old, I didn’t eat any chicken for 10 years and the closest thing I’ve had to fried chicken is a few Hooter’s hot wings 15 years ago. I was always under the impression fried chicken was invented to make you appreciate vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus.
You are missing Modernist Cuisine for its section on fried chicken, if we’re gonna get serious about it… wish I could find you the recipe, but I guess you just need to buy the books!
Agree that the Ad Hoc recipe is solid though. One of the best in that book (and it’s a good cookbook). Those dudes and dudettes know how to cook classic American food.
My mother was taught by her father to brine chicken before frying. We just didn’t call it brining, we called it “soaking in salt water overnight.” I think my grandfather probably learned it from my Grandmother’s people, since she never did much cooking having had help all her life. She came from money and he didn’t.
