Scott Peacock's and Edna Lewis's Miraculously Good Fried Chicken
- makes 4 servings -Adapted from The Gift of Southern Cooking.
- makes 4 servings -Adapted from The Gift of Southern Cooking.
Hands-on time, 1 to 1 1/2 hours; total time, 24 hours or more.
Ingredients
1/2 cup kosher salt (do not use table salt for brining)
1/2 cup kosher salt (do not use table salt for brining)
2 quarts cold water
1 three-pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces
1 quart buttermilk
1 pound lard
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup country ham pieces, or 1 thick slice country ham cut into 1/2-inch strips
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Procedures
1. To make the brine: Stir kosher salt into cold water until dissolved. Place chicken parts in a nonreactive bowl or pot; add enough brine to cover completely. Refrigerate 8 to 12 hours.
2. Drain the brined chicken and rinse out the bowl it was brined in. Return chicken to the bowl, and pour the buttermilk over. Cover and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours. Drain the chicken on a wire rack, discarding the buttermilk.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the fat for frying by putting the lard, butter and country ham into a heavy skillet or frying pan. Cook over low heat for 30 to 45 minutes, skimming as needed, until the butter ceases to throw off foam and the country ham is browned. Use a slotted spoon to remove the ham carefully from the fat.
4. Just before frying, increase the temperature to medium-high and heat the fat to 335 degrees. Prepare the dredge by blending together the flour, cornstarch, salt and pepper in a shallow bowl or on wax paper. Dredge the drained chicken pieces thoroughly in the flour mixture, then pat well to remove all excess flour.
5. Using tongs, slip some of the chicken pieces, skin side down, into the heated fat. (Do not overcrowd the pan or the cooking fat will cool. Fry in batches, if necessary.) Regulate the fat so it just bubbles, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes on each side, until the chicken is golden brown and cooked through. Drain thoroughly on a wire rack or on crumpled paper towels, and serve.
Fried chicken is delicious eaten hot, warm, at room temperature or cold.
1. To make the brine: Stir kosher salt into cold water until dissolved. Place chicken parts in a nonreactive bowl or pot; add enough brine to cover completely. Refrigerate 8 to 12 hours.
2. Drain the brined chicken and rinse out the bowl it was brined in. Return chicken to the bowl, and pour the buttermilk over. Cover and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours. Drain the chicken on a wire rack, discarding the buttermilk.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the fat for frying by putting the lard, butter and country ham into a heavy skillet or frying pan. Cook over low heat for 30 to 45 minutes, skimming as needed, until the butter ceases to throw off foam and the country ham is browned. Use a slotted spoon to remove the ham carefully from the fat.
4. Just before frying, increase the temperature to medium-high and heat the fat to 335 degrees. Prepare the dredge by blending together the flour, cornstarch, salt and pepper in a shallow bowl or on wax paper. Dredge the drained chicken pieces thoroughly in the flour mixture, then pat well to remove all excess flour.
5. Using tongs, slip some of the chicken pieces, skin side down, into the heated fat. (Do not overcrowd the pan or the cooking fat will cool. Fry in batches, if necessary.) Regulate the fat so it just bubbles, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes on each side, until the chicken is golden brown and cooked through. Drain thoroughly on a wire rack or on crumpled paper towels, and serve.
Fried chicken is delicious eaten hot, warm, at room temperature or cold.
7 comments:
That's one pound of lard.
Suck on that bitches.
It's lardariffic!
But remember you don't actually eat most of the lard. It stays in the pan.
If you make this, HEED the warning about not putting in too much chicken at once. This is deep frying. When you fry things, the key is to do it in hot-enough oil.
Hot oil means: the outside cooks quickly and becomes crispy, the inside cooks by steaming and becomes moist and tender, and this is good.
Oil that's not quite hot enough means: the outside doesn't cook quickly enough so it soaks up too much oil and becomes greasy and tough, and the inside isn't steamed enough and cooks more by convection and gets dried out. And this is bad. Very bad indeed, and it's why so many people hate fried food, think it's greasy, say it upsets their stomach, etc. In the bad scenario, the food soaks up much more of the cooking oil, so apart from having a bad texture, it's also very heavy and oily.
The thing is that if you put several pieces of food in the pan at once - particularly if the food is cold - the oil cools off too much and it takes a while to get back up to the proper temperature. During those several minutes the above Very Bad scenario is enacted.
For this recipe I would have the chicken at room temperature before you batter it. And I'd cook only two pieces at a time (a big and a small one, like a wing and half breast), especially if you use a chicken larger than 3 pounds - and most fryers are. Four batches per chicken. Your patience will not go unrewarded.
Thanks jaed. My real area of expertise is Italian cooking. Then I give my own family reciepes and not ones I steal off of the internets. Your contributions are always right on the money.
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Tony Giardino: So who's in this Pentavirate?
Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, *and* Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with is wee *beady* eyes, and that smug look on his face. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!
So I Married and Axe Murderer 1993
I've got a lot of not quite cooked thoroughly chicken at the Colonel's.
jaed's comments make it clear why fried chicken, though superlative when cooked right, is often screwed up.
Two totally useless comments but that's what I'm here for.
I am convinced that Southerners are the only people who know how to deep-fry food.
Around here even if I go to a good restaurant, the fried items are limp and soggy (e.g. fries) or chewy and greasy (e.g. chicken). When I was driving around the country and was in the South, however, I could stop at the veriest little hole in the wall and if something was fried, it would be perfect and delicious, crispy and delicate or crunchy and moist. I don't know what it is.
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