The front page article in today’s New York Times food section concerns the fried chicken of southeastern Indiana, a staple of the post-church Sunday dinner. “Best fried chicken I have ever tasted.” “If the Colonel had been from south Indiana, he would have been a general.”
The secret is to avoid frou-frou. No buttermilk soak, no cornmeal, no brining. Cut up the best chicken you can get — the back pieces that I save for the stockpot are included — rub with an astounding amount of table salt and ground black pepper, roll in flour, fry in lard or veg oil that comes up 3/4 of the way on the chicken pieces.
I COULD be on board with this, although I also season with paprika and granulated garlic. I do a double-dip in the (seasoned) flour, and use less fat…1/4 up the chicken, and turn more frequently. And i use bacon fat mixed with a neutral oil.
What do you other crazy SDMB home chicken-fryers think of this? Imma gonna give it a try!
Couldn’t be any worse than what I did to the chicken a couple nights ago. I pre-mix my seasoning recipe, someone left the lid off the container and (found out later) the flavors had gone off. Made a batter, got it too thick. Chucked the chicken in the pan, oil wasn’t hot enough. Ended up not cooking the chicken long enough. Should have just smoked a bowl and ordered pizza.
Just as well, I suppose you could say my seasoning is paprika based (because it is), but I’d really like to back that flavor off and move the white pepper closer to the forefront. So, since I need to redo my chicken spice anyway, I suppose I could grab a happy chicken from Sprouts this weekend and do the OP to it. I’ll need to get some good salt, though. “Nobody” disappeared my yummy sea salt and, after I ranted into the pantry for 15 minutes upon discovering that, “Nobody” tried to make it right by secreting a pound of some WalMart product I wouldn’t use to grit my driveway. The kids like to laugh at me when I eyeball anyone messing around in my kitchen–they still don’t realize I’m not playing and that I want them out of there.
Sorry for the rant. Needed to vent I guess. I’ll report back if I do that chicken.
Indigo:. Great god, what a disaster! I mean, cutting back on paprika and using more white pepper. What’s wrong with BLACK pepper?
Icarus:. Unfortunately, the BEST chicken I can get is Buddhist chicken, head and feet included…but it is an older chicken meant for braising, not dry cooking. I do have access to organic and kosher chickens, though, which are next best.
I’m not very good at frying anything, but the best fried chicken I ever made was marinated in buttermilk. I think all meat benefits from a little brine time for the salt to penetrate (wet or dry) and chicken in particular tends to benefit from a short acidic marinade like lemon juice, vinegar or buttermilk. But I agree 95% of the result is due to frying it correctly with a good breading. A brine or marinade just adds that little extra touch of flavor.
To be extra-clear, I don’t consider my fried chicken (or the Indiana people’s fried chicken, to be DEEP-fried, but PAN-fried. Not submerged in the grease but to a certain depth, and in need of turning. I use less fat, Indianans use more.
Sounds like how I grew up frying chicken, except that the salt & pepper would be mixed into the flour instead of being applied separately, and I don’t think we put so much fat in the pan.
After you finish frying up your chicken, you mix the remaining flour melange into the grease, and add enough milk to get a proper cream gravy. Yum.
I miss it - it’s way too much work for one person, and too much fat besides. But I’ve found no one who does a proper cream gravy, and blessed few places that do a decent fried chicken.
My fried chicken improved considerably since I copied a recipe I saw on America’s Test Kitchen.
I dearly love KFC: that’s Korean Fried Chicken. ATK’s KFC recipe is basically: one part flour to one part cornstarch, seasonings of your choice, and then enough water to make a thin runny batter. Dip in the chicken and then fry as usual.
Wow, this recipe makes a shatteringly-crisp coating. They said that they tried using buttermilk or eggs or beer in the batter, but came back to using just plain water as that made the crispest chicken.
My seasonings of choice are: plenty of salt, fresh-ground black pepper, paprika, garlic powder, sage, and cayenne.
Zyada:. I season the chicken before dredging, but then season the flour as well…pan-fried chicken needs a LOT of flavor or it’s insipid. Most fancy restaurant fried chicken (here in NYC, anyway) is insipid. I also use the leftover seasoned flour to make gravy, but prefer water to milk.
It’s not really THAT much work! And I only do it 3 or 4 times a year, so my girlish figure is safe.
Sometimes I substitute a packaged Cajun seasoning mix (SLAP YO’ MAMA is my favorite; Tony Chachere’s is also good, but a little too salty), which is probably exactly your recipe.
I would try the Korean method, but this thread is mainly about what chicken-fryers think about the Indiana chicken deal. Salt, pepper, and flour.
I’m relatively new to making (what I consider to be) good fried chicken, but I definitely prefer more seasoning than just salt and pepper. My flour mixture contains salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, oregano and chili powder.
I go down the street to the chicken shack and buy mine there. It’s delicious and I don’t have to clean any oil off the stove (or the walls, or the counter …)
I loves me some fried chicken but I rarely eat it. I did make my own once. If I ever do that again I’ll know to take the next day off of work for clean up.
mmm
Honestly, I think black pepper is more versatile. I use both in my cooking, but white pepper – at least all the different types I’ve tried – all have a very strong earthy, musty odor to them that I could spot a mile away. I’m not entirely sure if I’m describing it right, but it’s pungent. I don’t find it subtle at all. I love the stuff, but for day-to-day application, I prefer my collection of black peppers (Kampot Black Cambodian, Lampong Indonesian, Black Malibar, and Tellicherry).
So this still will very much depend on the cook. I find black pepper much more useful in my kitchen. (Though when I do fried chicken, white pepper is one of the spices I usually use. Salt, white pepper, a bit of black pepper, a bit of paprika, garlic or onion, and a skosh of MSG. I don’t really use the paprika for flavor in this case. Just enough to help along with the browning of the crust. If I’m feeling lazy, though, I’ll do a “Baltimore” style chicken with the seasonings, and just use Old Bay.)
The only “trick” technique-wise I have for my fried chicken is to wet the flour mixture a bit with water or buttermilk (if you used a marinade). I don’t mean make it into a batter, but rather to sprinkle some liquid in such that little clumps of flour form here and there. I prefer a single dedge of flour on my chicken, but the wet flour clumps make nice nooks and crannies that add extra crunchiness and texture to the coating. I can’t remember where I learned this tip – this isn’t something I came up with myself.
(ETA: Should have guessed, the idea probably came from Serious Eats, although I could swear I remember reading about it somewhere before.)
There are also some batter-fried chickens I’ve had that have been lovely, but I haven’t tried playing around with that with whole skin-on chicken pieces.
I get a fragrance something like body odor from white pepper. Other times, it’s almost fishy smelling. White pepper sometimes works (hot & sour soup, roadside chicken) but I agree that black pepper is the more versatile of the two.
