This week my son and I are visiting my parents in Mississippi. I've always loved fried anything but I have never been good at frying. My fried foods always come out greasy or soggy or underdone or burnt or so funky looking no one is willing to try them. Frying is truly an art form and to do it right you have to be taught by a Master. So, I got Mama to show me what to do.
Mama's ingredients aren't measured so I am going to guess at these measurements. It seems like exact measurements aren't really necessary anyway. It's the frying process itself that makes the chicken great so you could add whatever spices suit your tastes. Also, you could use any chicken parts that you like best. I like thighs and Liam likes legs because they have a "handle". The frying process will be the same for whatever parts you use.
Peanut oil works best because it "fries hotter", which I think means it doesn't burn at a very high temperature. On this day we didn't have any peanut oil so we used canola oil. When I was a kid, Mama used Crisco, but now I only use my Crisco for make-up removal and moisturizing (my skin is really dry). One tip for buying peanut oil, which can be a little pricey at Walmart and other fancy stores, is to go to a Middle Eastern or Indian grocer. Peanut oil and even nice, rich and dark olive oil is much cheaper in these places.
Iron skillets brown the chicken best but sometimes Mama fries her chicken in a stew pot, as it is deeper than a skillet the oil will cover more of the chicken.
Typically Mama gets breast pieces, de-bones them and cuts them into strips. We eat those strips at room temperature on Christmas with sausage balls, Pancho's cheese dip, home made biscuits, and spinach dip with Ruffles for the vegetable in lieu of a fancy A-Christmas-Carol-type of meal.
Southern Fried Chicken (collected from Mama)
1 package of thighs, skinned
1 package of legs, skinned
1 egg
1 cup of milk
2 cups of flour
2 tablespoons of salt
1 teaspoon of pepper
1 cast iron skillet
2 large tall tupperware bowls
Canola oil
Wash and dry your chicken on paper towels.
Mix the egg and milk together in one of your tall bowls. Put as much chicken as will fit into your bowl and let it soak while you mix your other ingredients and prep your pan. Mama says you can soak it for up to an hour before you cook your chicken. It helps to flavor and tenderize the meat.
Mix the flour, salt, and pepper (spices to taste, obviously) in the other bowl.
Prep your pan by putting the oil in the skillet about 1/4 deep, maybe a little less. The oil is going to bubble and move. Too much oil will cause it to overflow when the frying gets good and going. So be careful not to add too much.
To begin with, heat over medium-high heat. When oil starts to "dance" a little it is hot enough.
For this part you need one of your hands to be the "wet hand" and the other hand the "dry hand". Remove a piece of chicken from the milk and egg wash with your wet hand and put it in the flour with your dry hand. Coat the chicken in the flour. It isn't necessary to make the flour coating super thick. There will be more flour clinging to the chicken than you realize. So don't worry it to death in the flour.
Turn the temperature down to medium. Shake off the excess flour and gently place the chicken in the oil. If you do not hear a sizzle then the oil isn't hot enough, meaning you need to wait until you do hear the sizzle before adding more chicken to the pan. This will probably take about 20 seconds. If your oil isn't hot enough the batter will soak up all the oil and your chicken will be greasy. So watch this step carefully.
Your oil should be about 1/2 way up the side of your chicken. At this point, you've just added cold chicken to hot oil which reduces your oil temperature a bit. Even so, leave the chicken on medium heat. Do not give in to temptation to turn your heat back up. It will quickly get hot again and if you had turned up the temperature you would have burned the outside of the chicken before you noticed it was burning.
We put our chicken in the oil at 5:17 and at 5:23 it was ready to turn. You have to watch for the browning on the sides of the chicken. Do not touch the chicken once you put it in the oil, or you will start knocking off the breading. Leave it alone and let it cook. Your chicken might not cook in this amount of time and time isn't the right factor to judge by when it should be turned. I was just making a note of the length of time our chicken needed. Watch carefully for that browning on the edges. When it looks crispy and brown, you can turn it over. When the second side appears crispy and brown you can turn it over again, but try not to mess with it too much. Give it time to cook and don't lift it up out of the pan to check it every minute.
The chicken is done when it has dark brown spots in some places and lighter brown in others. Remember that it is hot and when you take it out of the oil it is going to continue cooking a bit. Also, note that when you take it out of the oil and put it on a newspaper and paper towel-lined cookie sheet the chicken will have an oily sheen to it. This will disappear in a minute so do not be tempted to blot it off.
If you were worried about fat you wouldn't be eating fried chicken, so leave it be.
After frying up the first pan full you will notice that your oil is filled with cloudy gunk. This is the excess flour from your chicken and it will burn. So you need to pour off the oil into a heat proof dish and get that gunk out of the bottom of your pan. Add some fresh oil and then the pour in some of the old, hot oil trying to make sure you don't accidentally dump the gunk back in the pan. If you don't get that gunk out, your chicken will be black and yucky on the outside and a bright pink salmonella party on the inside.
(Try not to notice the coupon in the background of the picture above for Jack Pirtle's Fried Chicken http://www.jackpirtleschicken.com/ .)
After you fry up all your chicken you will certainly want some gravy to go on top of your mashed potatoes or rice and biscuits. Gravy is easy, easy to make.
Brown Gravy (collected from my Mama)
Pan drippings and gunk
A little flour
water or chicken broth (I prefer chicken broth)
Pour off the excess oil and add back all that gunk. Get it hot and add two tablespoons of flour, more or less, to the pan drippings. Using a flat wooden or metal spoon scrape that flour and gunk around the pan until it turns a medium brown color (incidentally, what you are doing is called making a "roux" in fancy cooking circles). Watch it carefully or it will burn before you know it. When it is nicely browned, add a little chicken broth or water until you have as much gravy as you want. If it seems a little thin just keep scraping it around the pan until it thickens up.
Congratulations! You just made Southern Fried Chicken!
After you eat, you will look like this:
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