Fried Chicken: Cook-Off 5

[fifi]

Ummm . . . I really don't know. I have heard some theories about the shallower sides letting steam escape but, from a scientific standpoint, I am not sure I buy that. There may be some traditional "wisdom" at work here that would not stand up in the light of day. I don't know.

I will be using my cast iron fry pan for the original try. I may digress if I decide to repeat.

[patti]

I have 3 iron skillets, none of them large enough for chicken frying, in my opinion, but I do have a black iron dutch oven. I also have a Magnalite pot called a 'chicken fryer' which I have never actually used for frying chicken. I'm torn between the two. Any opinions on which of the two pots will turn out the better chicken?

I'm also sort of hoping to see pics of someone else's chicken before I do mine.

[fifi]

I am betting that the Magnalite Chicken Frier has been used in many a Cajun home to make champion fried chicken. Don't worry about it. I think that the grease, temperature and technique rule.

[Toliver]

...given the splatter factor, and the fact that all of those cast iron chicken friers I see, I wonder why a person wouldn't use a LC dutch oven?

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Ummm . . . I really don't know. I have heard some theories about the shallower sides letting steam escape but, from a scientific standpoint, I am not sure I buy that. There may be some traditional "wisdom" at work here that would not stand up in the light of day. I don't know.

I will be using my cast iron fry pan for the original try. I may digress if I decide to repeat.

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In the previous eG discussion I linked to on page 3 of this thread, Dave the Cook was of the opinion:

I disagree about the Dutch oven. A regular-height cast iron pan lets moisture evaporate better. But do get a spatter screen -- not so much for odor control as for easier clean-up.

I wonder if anyone near participating in this cook-off and is to the point of frying up some chicken would care to try a side-by-side experiment (provided they have a dutch oven and a fry pan)?

[Mayhaw Man]

OK.  So, I have a cast iron skillet.  I have a splatter screen.  I will have a small chicken tomorrow.  But, given the splatter factor, and the fact that all of those cast iron chicken friers I see, I wonder why a person wouldn't use a LC dutch oven?

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I use a moderately deep dutch oven all the time. It works great. Kind of an oval shape. I think I have a photo of it in the blog that I did last year.

On the other hand, a little grease will keep your appliances shiny. So there is an upside to a bit of splatter.

[Varmint]

I haven't chimed in on this discussion, simply because my kitchen is not in any shape to make fried chicken. However, I'm drooling along throughout this entire process. I've made fried chicken maybe 300 times in my life, and I think I've got it pretty well worked out. There's a few keys, and all the rest ends up as personal preferences.

First, brining is good. I use buttermilk (not low-fat) to which I've added some salt. Add other flavorings if you wish. I recently saw the former fry-cook at Jacques-Imo's use dill pickle juice as his flavoring brine. Regardless, use the buttermilk brine.

Use seasoned flour as your coating. Let the buttermilk drip off, then shake the chicken in the flour.

Let the chicken air dry for awhile -- 45 minutes is good. This is a pretty important step.

Use vegetable shortening (i.e., Crisco) as your primary frying fat. Adding other fats for flavor (e.g., bacon grease) is a matter of personal preference.

Keeping a loose lid on the frying during the first side actually helps the cooking process, so feel free to do that.

One other thing I do is to cut the breasts in half before beginning this entire process. That way, they cook as quickly as the other pieces of chicken.

It's as simple as that. Everyone el

[torakris]

I don't think I have yet met a Japanese person who has even heard of buttermilk, and of course it isn't exactly something that can be easily imported.

So I make do without, I do the milk and lemon juice thing and find it works for most baked goods but you just can't use it for salad dressings, soups, etc

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You might try getting some buttermilk starter so you can make your own. I ordered some of this a while back but still haven't tried it. I believe that the process is just like making yogurt.

Anyways, I'm sure that the milk-and-lemon-juice wil work fine for marinating the chicken.

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Edsel,

I can not thank you enough for that link!!!

I have been wanting to do some cheese making experimenting as well and now I have found the perfect place.

Make your own buttermilk, wow, never thought of that....

I have tried that Saco (?) product of powdered buttermilk and it was ok in baked goods but didn't work for things like dressings and soups.

[snowangel]

Dean, I'm trusting that you will join into this once your kitchen is done. Mighty nice grease inauguration, I do think.

[irodguy]

Well growing up in Dallas Texas there were basically two Fried chicken joints almost everybody remembers

1) Leslie's Chicken Shack

2) Youngblood’s

Interestingly enough they were cousins and used basically the same recipe.

Soak the chicken in buttermilk overnight

Next day dredge the Chicken in flour

Then Back into buttermilk this time with an ungodly amount of Salt in it

Then back in Flour

Fry

The Flour was actually a mix of Flour, Pepper and more salt.

Are you seeing a theme here? Yes lots of salt.

I got the top secret recipe from a friend of mine who used to work at Leslie's.

[snowangel]

My chicken is happily bathing in buttermilk, kosher salt and some tabasco. I cut the breast halves and the back into halves.

So, what does everyone do with the livers and hearts? Buttermilk or not? And, in my kitchen, these are the cooks treats. My mother says she was 30 before she knew these parts we edible -- they never appeared on the plate!

[Marlene]

ok, ok, I'm breaking down. I hear buttermilk as a common theme. I'll go get buttermilk tomorrow. And crisco.

[mizducky]

Another chicken-frying newbie here, trying to figure out the cooking-vessel thang. I'm going to opt for the pan-frying technique, probably using thighs with skin on. The only object in our kitchen right now that looks even vaguely appropriate for the task is a cast-iron item abandoned by a previous housemate, sans lid I'm afraid--sort of an extra deep skillet, 3" deep by 10-and-a-smidge inches in diameter. Lodge calls a pot of those dimensions a "chicken fryer." Aside from someone upstream aways in this topic who mentioned owning a Magnalite chicken fryer, I hadn't heard that term mentioned before, nor a pan of this depth, taller than a standard skillet but shorter than a Dutch oven. Is this a for-real standard pan designation, or a marketing concept of some sort?

Oh, and the missing lid issue: can I just substitute a universal lid (non cast-iron, not a tight seal), or should I just stick to a method that doesn't require lidding the pan with anything fiercer than a splatter screen?

I'd be totally up for just buying and seasoning a whole new cast iron skillet, except for the fact that I've just had a whole bunch of work deadlines dumped on me. Alas, it's now going to be hard enough fitting the chicken experiment into my schedule for the next couple of weeks without adding a full CI-seasoning session to the agenda. So I'm seeing if I can make do with the tools at hand.

[fifi]

Mizducky, sounds like you are in business. My sister has an old Magnalite pan that has deeper than normal straight sides and I think she calls it a chicken fryer. Putting a lid on when cooking the first side is optional, though it does help to get it cooked through if you have big pieces. When I have wanted to do this, I just used a lid that fit my skillet "close enough."

[Smithy]

I've always heard pots of those dimensions referred to as chicken fryers. I figured that's what they were for. Mine, a garage-sale special and properly seasoned, is heating up the fat right now. On the way home tonight I debated using the old family heirloom steel pot (slightly larger but same dimensions) that Mom used until she got an electric skillet, or this chicken fryer. The fryer needed cleaning anyway, so it's the choice.

We never did advance soaking in our family; by contrast with everyone else's recipe Mom's approach sounds very pedestrian, but it was always wonderful. Wash and pat the chicken dry, dredge it in flour and salt, drop into the hot grease. Bacon grease and Crisco were, I think, the mix. I have lard and Crisco, small bits of each, maybe enough for the pot. If I need to supplement it'll have to be with vegetable oil. If the results are worth photos I'll post later.

[edsel]

...

First, brining is good.  I use buttermilk (not low-fat) to which I've added some salt.  Add other flavorings if you wish.  I recently saw the former fry-cook at Jacques-Imo's use dill pickle juice as his flavoring brine.  Regardless, use the buttermilk brine.

Use seasoned flour as your coating.  Let the buttermilk drip off, then shake the chicken in the flour.

Let the chicken air dry for awhile -- 45 minutes is good.  This is a pretty important step.

...

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A while back I tried brining chicken before frying it. The meat was really flavorful and juicy, but the crispy outer layer kind of separated itself from the chicken. It was like a crunchy shell with steaming hot chicken rattling around inside. Not exactly what I was looking for.

I didn't combine the brining with the buttermilk soak (makes sense now that you mention it). I brined the chicken, drained it, soaked in buttermilk for a while, then breaded it and let it rest on a rack in the fridge to dry the surface before frying. I wonder if the brining made the chicken too moist.

[fifi]

. . . . .

A while back I tried brining chicken before frying it. The meat was really flavorful and juicy, but the crispy outer layer kind of separated itself from the chicken.  It was like a crunchy shell with steaming hot chicken rattling around inside. Not exactly what I was looking for.

I didn't combine the brining with the buttermilk soak (makes sense now that you mention it). I brined the chicken, drained it, soaked in buttermilk for a while, then breaded it and let it rest on a rack in the fridge to dry the surface before frying. I wonder if the brining made the chicken too moist.

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Hmmm . . . I have only ever relied on the salt in the buttermilk to do the brining. Granted, I didn't realize that that was what Aunt Minnie was doing when she gave the Morton Salt box a couple of healthy shakes into the buttermilk. Truth be known, she may not have realized it either. I am thinking that the "rattling around" phenomenon may be due to the amount of time in the buttermilk. It really doesn't get that clingy film unless it goes at least overnight. But I can't say for sure since I haven't tried it the other way.

I have never let my floured chicken sit for any time before frying. Again, just because Aunt Minnie didn't do it that way. She insisted that you flour one piece at a time, give it a quick shake and into the pan. For one thing, she put baking powder in the flour so that leavening would probably be lost if let sit too long. Then it also occurs to me that adding one piece at a time with the flouring in between (and she was quick) probably had a secondary effect of not letting the fat cool down from putting too much chicken in at once. I can remember seeing her put the pieces into the big pan starting from the outside and working around in a clockwise fashion, spiralling in to the center. Then she went around the same way for turning and the same way again for taking the pieces out. All of that fiddling is probably why she didn't put a lid on for the first side.

The reason I remember all of this is that the "discussion" of this technique was one of the more "colorful" between my grandma and her. The same discussion happened every time Aunt Minnie came to visit.

Grandma: "Minnie, just put the damn chicken in the pan and get done with it! You are so fiddly you drive me nuts."

Aunt Minnie: "Ola Mae, I have sold more chicken than you ever thought about and I know what I am doing. You don't. So leave me the hell alone or get out of your kitchen."

(Aunt Minnie owned a good part of Brookshire TX for a time, including the hotel and dining room. She would sell pies and who knows what all to the railroad.)

[helenjp]

Kris, that New England Cheesemaking Supply does a great job of shipping to Japan - they sent my stuff as "educational supplies", so it sailed through customs.

That was years ago, but I had a good time with it. Wish I'd been a bit more ambitious!

To sit or not to sit after flouring....I've always thought that you shouldn't let it sit between flouring and frying. I'll be interested to try a comparison.

Edited March 16, 2005 by helenjp (log)

[fifi]

. . . . .

To sit or  not to sit after flouring....I've always thought that you shouldn't let it sit between flouring and frying. I'll be interested to try a comparison.

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Please do. I have never let it sit and I am so hungry for fried chicken I am not inclined to risk any of my precious four pieces, even though I am darn curious.

[Smithy]

When it came right down to it, I just COULDN'T give 4 chicken thighs the same treatment when there were tests and comparisons to be made. I salted two, then dredged them in salted flour. The other two got salt and paprika on the skin, then were dipped into a lightly beaten egg, and then dredged in flour mixed with salt, paprika, and a home-made Cajun seasoning mix. Everything was cooked in the same pan at the same time. Interestingly, the egg-coated chicken seemed to cook more quickly. The egg-coated chicken had a much thicker crust than the stuff that had just been dredged in flour. I thought, when removing the chicken from the pan, that the egg coating would be tough, but it was a tender thick crust with tender juicy chicken underneath. I preferred it, both for the texture and for the extra skin seasoning. I couldn't tell any difference to the texture or flavor of the chicken flesh beneath the crust.

I took the chicken pieces out a bit too soon and ended up with them undercooked. Microwaving two made them tougher, so I reheated the pan and fat, this time a little hotter, and replaced two of the pieces. I got the fat too hot, and the brown bits in the bottom of the pan started charring. Note to self: the correct setting on this burner is around 5, not 7. I rescued the chicken in time, though, and it came out better than the microwaved stuff.

No photos worth showing. Next time I'll try someone else's recipe.

[patti]

If I were smart, I wouldn't show a photo. My husband even suggested I make a Popeye's run and take a picture of theirs and try to pass it off as mine. Anyway, here's a picture of some chicken tenders, which were soaked in buttermilk for a couple of hours, dredged in flour, then set out to dry while I fried chicken thighs in a combination of Crisco and bacon fat. The thighs had been marinated in hot sauce, but I did not dredge them in flour. I was trying to make a delicious low carb fried chicken, like Popeye's Naked Chicken. I guess it's low carb, but it's not delicious. Where I think I went wrong was in the oil temperature. Too hot. The thighs got dark too soon and I ended up taking them out of the fat sooner than I wanted to and finishing them off in the oven. The chicken was edible, but not delicious. I didn't eat any of the chicken tenders, but my son said they were good. He wasn't jumping up doing a happy dance about them, but then he's 17 and doesn't do happy dances about food, anyway.

[fifi]

Thank you for having the courage to relate experiences that are less than optimum. Those are extremely valuable. We learn by our mistakes. God knows I have. I always say that to my kids and they come back with . . . "Gee, Mom. You are so smart. You must be a real screw-up."

Maybe southern style fried chicken is something that shouldn't be tried for low carb. But, let me ask you . . . Would the low carb chicken taste really good if you weren't trying to duplicate the fried chicken? I mean, maybe it is a good thing on its own terms.

[snowangel]

Thanks, patti, for the report! I just wish you'd taken at least a bite of one of the tenders...

[patti]

Thank you for having the courage to relate experiences that are less than optimum. Those are extremely valuable. We learn by our mistakes. God knows I have. I always say that to my kids and they come back with . . . "Gee, Mom. You are so smart. You must be a real screw-up." 

Maybe southern style fried chicken is something that shouldn't be tried for low carb. But, let me ask you . . . Would the low carb chicken taste really good if you weren't trying to duplicate the fried chicken? I mean, maybe it is a good thing on its own terms.

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Thanks for the support, fifi. I really enjoy Popeye's low carb batterless fried chicken, so I guess I was trying to imitate theirs, though I really have no idea what their recipe is. It's very flavorful and the skin is crispy. My skin was crispy too, just a leeeetle too brown. I had a hard time with my thermometer, so maybe if I'd actually been able to regulate the temp properly, it would've turned out better? I think I'll stick to baked chicken (which I guess should be properly called roasted), 'cause I know I can do that very well.

[Mayhaw Man]

Maybe southern style fried chicken is something that shouldn't be tried for low carb.

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You think?

Low carb fried chicken is not only wrong, but it's just wrong to even think about.

There are so many problems in the world, culinary and otherwise. Why waste time and energy on this one. Some things just aren't meant to be.

[patti]

Thanks, patti, for the report!  I just wish you'd taken at least a bite of one of the tenders...

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Susan, unfortunately for me, one bite leads to more bites, so it was better left untasted. I was hoping for a good response from my son, but he was in a grouchy mood and asking for details about the taste of something was a little too much. Why, when I was a kid, I was very good at making my eyes 'light up' when my mother wanted a good response to her cooking!