Yes, it’s today. What’s your favorite recipe?
KFC, extra crispy 
Alton Brown’s buttermilk soaked one, with a metric crapload of cayenne pepper under the crust.
If only I’d known-- I had fried chicken on Monday. I figured it was appropriately-American food.
I don’t think I could pick a favorite recipe. I like it all. Gimme some fried chicken, and I’ll shovel it down.
Wait… National Fried Chicken Day isn’t the Fourth of July? 
What monster is perpetuating this idiocy? 
Best Fried Chicken: My own.
Best Fast-Food Chain Fried Chicken: Popeye’s
Best Sit-Down Chain Fried Chicken: Po’ Folks (out of business, but they had very good fried chicken)
Best Fried Chicken that I expected to suck: Was driving up 441 through central Georgia on Saturday and passed by a convenience store that was selling fried chicken that they made there. Usually I avoid these like the plague, but the woman just pulled her first batch from the fryer as I walked in, so I knew the chicken would at least be fresh and not dried out.
Bought a couple of pieces, a roll, and went on down the road. And the chicken was awesome… juicy, crunchy crust, salty and a few seasonings… damned near perfect. After finishing it, I turned around, went back to the restaurant, and told the woman that she made the best chicken I’ve ever had, and tipped her $5. She said “I don’t follow the store recipe… I make my own, like momma told me.”
It’s hard to believe, but at one time in my life, fried chicken was the most eaten dish in America (at least according to the Book of Lists, my 6th-grade Reference Bible. ) Now it’s seen as a cardio-vascular indulgence.
I can’t make fried chicken to save my life. And I’m a pretty good cook in general.
My favorite place for fried chicken is Mazel Wok in Woodbourne, NY, which is up in the Catskills, so I only get it over the summer. Fortunately, that’s now, so you’ve chosen a pretty good time to whet my appetite.
Best fried chicken I ever ate was in summer camp, 1982 or 1983. Don’t remember the exact year, but the cook back then was fantastic. After all of us campers got our meals, extra chicken could be taken from a tray in front of the kitchen serving window. I selected the fattest drumstick I’d ever seen, and OMG, the outside was perfectly crispy and the inside was perfectly juicy. I know it seems weird to have this kind of vivid food memory from almost 30 years ago, but what can I say, it was just that good that it stuck with me.
I can’t make fried chicken to save my life, either.
However, I don’t really need to. I coat chicken pieces with melted butter, and then coat them with seasoned bread crumbs (seasoned salt and poultry seasoning) and then bake in the oven at 350 for an hour or so. If I remember, I’ll turn the pieces over after about 30 minutes. I also usually bake potatoes while I have the oven on. This means that I only need to scrounge up a non-starchy vegetable for a complete meal. And a salad is a perfectly good vegetable.
I got the basic recipe from one of Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook cookbooks. She seasoned with salt, garlic salt, and pepper, but I prefer my seasoning.
Stroud’s in Kansas City, MO. Really amazingly good, but pricy.
I do a low-carb fried chicken that my wife loves dearly:
Dip chicken in one beaten egg.
Season the chicken with a spice blend of white pepper, salt, garlic powder, paprika and cumin.
Toss in coating made of 2 cups of pork rinds, ground to crumbs in a food processor (Mine allows me to invert the blade so the dull side is breaking them up) and
1/4 cup soy flour.
Deep fry in 320 degree oil for 14 minutes.
Popeyes