ONE SIZZLING ADVENTURE-NOVEL COOK TACKLES A SOUTHERN CLASSIC
By Emily Battle (Southern Ledger Writer)
Fried chicken haunted me for a while.
Ever since I had moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Bojangles is a little harder to find than in my childhood home of North Carolina, the urge to try my hand at this Southern classic had tugged at me.
The problem is, the thought of cooking fried chicken brings to mind a certain desire to groan and say, "Oh, to heck with it."
I can remember my mother-who makes great fried chicken-carefully lining her stovetop with aluminum foil, cutting up brown paper bags and closing all doors leading from the kitchen to the rest of the house (not to mention putting our cat out for the entire day) before attempting such a feat.
The aroma of this heavenly dish is hauntingly pleasurable, and seems to travel through every crevice of a house like Drano through a hair-clogged pipe. The problem is, if fried chicken is cooking in your house, you're going to gorge yourself on it, and it's not going to be pleasant if, two nights after the frying, you lay your head down on your pillow to release a puff of eau-de-extra-tasty-crispy.
Still, those laborious steps in mind, I was eager to try my hand at frying some bird parts. I was helped along by my obsession with cable's Food Network. One afternoon, I was lazily watching star chef Tyler Florence demonstrate his "Ultimate" recipe for buttermilk fried chicken, and I could hardly keep my stomach at bay.
I practically drooled as I watched the raw chicken pieces pass from an overnight water bath, to a dredging in seasoned flour, to a dip in buttermilk and then back to the flour, before plunging into a pot of herb-infused oil. I must try this, I thought.
In the midst of planning my wedding, I received another fortuitous sign that seemed to be a call from the hot-grease gods. A friend gave me a cast-iron skillet as a shower gift. From the moment I lugged it out of its tissue-paper wrapping, I knew it was destined to produce some crispy drumsticks. Soon after the wedding craziness had died down, I sat at work one Friday night and thought, "This is fried chicken weekend."
I scoured the Web for recipes, trying to make up a grocery list for my trip home. I settled on a combination of two, both from the Food Network Web site. One is a "buttermilk fried chicken" recipe by the network's Tanya Holland. I liked it because it called for frying in a skillet, like I had, and for an overnight soak in seasoned buttermilk.
The other was that Tyler Florence recipe I'd saved months ago. Looking back over it after my initial obsession, I was bored by the fact that it only called for soaking the chicken in water overnight (Boring! Tanya's buttermilk sounds way more fun that that!). And I was a bit intimidated by the fact that it called for frying the chicken in a half-full pot of oil.
Something about having that much hot oil in my house makes me uncomfortable. Once I'd settled on my method, I was confronted with another issue--I'd never actually bought a chicken to fry before. There I stood in front of the grocer's meat cooler, finger tapping my lips, perusing the selection of boneless, skinless chicken pieces, "country style" cut up chicken, whole birds, chicken tenders, and even Cornish game hens.
The store I'd chosen to visit is known for service, but whenever I'm in its meat department I always want to make a quick selection and get out of there before one of the butchers saunters out to ask if he can help me, thus inviting me to reveal my lack of kitchen prowess.
So I stood there, trying to look like I knew what I was doing as the butcher unloaded boxes of chicken trays into the refrigerated cabinet. I finally settled on four of the store's "premium" drumsticks. I admit, this is my favorite fried chicken cut. But then I felt bad, especially knowing that my husband is a white meat guy, and I went back for a split bone-in breast.
This was not the 3-pound "fryer" that my recipes called for, but I had not found that word anywhere in the cooler I was looking at. Every whole chicken in that cabinet was labeled "roaster," and most of them scared me away with the word, "giblet."
That night, I lovingly plunged my chicken pieces into a bath of buttermilk seasoned with onions, smashed garlic cloves, parsley, rosemary, thyme, paprika and cayenne pepper. I put a lid on my concoction and proudly made room for it on my refrigerator shelf. All the next day, I thought about when to start my chicken endeavor. I also pulled out a biscuit recipe I'd clipped from a magazine. Biscuits and spaghetti squash were to accompany my first fried chicken.
At 5 p.m., it seemed the time had come. I pulled out the foil, cut up some paper bags and carefully aligned my equipment.
First, I made the biscuit dough, and got them in the oven. Then, I cut open the squash and stuck it in the microwave. I dredged the milk-bathed chicken in Tyler's seasoned flour while the squash cooled, and then prepared the vegetable (just added chopped garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese and black pepper) while the oil heated up.
Then it was time to test the waters (actually, the oil). I'd read a post on a food blog not too long ago about a home cook confused about what the right temperature for chicken-frying oil is. Since his problem seemed to be soggy crust, I turned the oil up to about 7 ("medium high" on my range of 0-9) and plunged in two drumsticks and a breast.
After about 9 minutes, I noticed that the portion of the chicken under the oil sure did look dark. I flipped it to reveal a jet-black, shining crust, just the thing I'd been trying to avoid. I turned the temperature down a couple of notches and flipped all the meat, but after about five more minutes, it was burned to a crisp. I laid it out on the paper bags, cut into it and wanted to cry.
Against a midnight-black exterior was a rose-colored center that told me this chicken had barely gotten hot. Saddened, I put the bird pieces back in the now-dark oil, turned it down to 3 and hoped for the best. After the suggested 30 minutes I pulled it out and decided to watch it cool before I plunged the next batch in. I sliced into the breast, relieved to find it white all the way through, but convinced it was inedible because of its dark exterior.
Then my husband came up from the basement, famished from an afternoon of football-watching, and started munching. "Not bad," he said, as I plunged the second batch into an oil bath set at 3. When he learned it would be 30 minutes before this second batch would be ready, he volunteered to eat the black pieces, so I made him up a plate of chicken, squash and biscuit and he gave the meat raving reviews.
The second batch started out way too cold, and I had to turn the heat up to save it from being soggy and undercooked. It turns out the ideal setting is somewhere around 5 or 6. The way to avoid the guessing is to buy a thermometer, so you can heat your oil exactly to the recommended 350-degree cooking temperature. The second batch came out all right, with a crisp crust the color of fried chicken, not motor oil.
I enjoyed the onion-, garlic- and herb-laden batter, and even created a delicacy of my own along the way: I threw the sliced onions from the soaking mixture into the dredging flour, then flung bits of that into the cooking oil for an onion-ring-like accompaniment to my dish. So was it worth the time, the shopping, the preparation and the cleanup? Absolutely, and the best part is, I think fried chicken tastes best cold the next day, so lunch was covered for a while. We had fried chicken quesadillas and fried chicken over salad.
That, and it curbed my craving for Bojangles.
Buttermilk Fried Chicken (This is a combination of the fried chicken recipes of two television chefs-Tyler Florence and Tanya Holland-plus a few additions I made.)
1 three- to four-pound fryer (I used four drumsticks and one split breast)
For the soaking mixture:
2 cups buttermilk, plus another cup to use when dredging
6 cloves garlic, smashed
1 large onion, sliced
chopped fresh herbs (I used rosemary, thyme and parsley because they were already in my house)
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Texas Pete hot sauce
For the dredging flour:
2 - 3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
black pepper and salt, to taste
2 teaspoons chili powder
for the frying oil:
Peanut oil
Sprigs of any fresh herbs you have on-hand (I had rosemary and thyme)
1. Soak the chicken in the buttermilk with garlic, onions, herbs, paprika, cayenne pepper and as much Texas Pete as you want to put in there. Refrigerate overnight.
2. Take the chicken out of the soaking mixture, leaving some of the fresh herbs clinging to it. Add the extra cup of buttermilk to the soaking mixture (and some more Texas Pete if you like).
3. In a shallow platter, mix flour, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper and chili powder.
4. Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour mixture, then dip them back in the buttermilk, and dredge again in the flour. Leave them out to rest while you prepare the oil.
5. Pour about an inch of peanut oil into a cast-iron skillet. Warm it up with the fresh herbs. This is the tricky part. The recipes I used say to warm the oil over medium-high heat, or until it gets to around 350 degrees. I had no thermometer, but I found medium-high on my stovetop to be way too hot. Next time I plan to use a thermometer.
6. Fry a few pieces at a time (don't overcrowd the skillet). Keep an eye on the chicken, but total cooking time should be around 30 minutes, with a turn halfway through. When finished, lay chicken out on a brown paper bag to dry.
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Emily Battle is a professional journalist who lives in Virginia. She grew up in North Carolina cheering for the Tar Heels before attending college at UNC in Chapel Hill. Contact her at bylime@hotmail.com.
Copyright 2006 The Southern Ledger. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
