There are nearly as many recipes for fried chicken as there are cooks. Marinated in buttermilk or not at all. Skin on and skin off. Coated in flour, dunked in breadcrumbs or (heaven forfend) crumbled cornflakes. Deep fried, shallow fried, oven baked or a combination thereof.
I’ve tried various versions and this is the one I like the best. It’s crispy outside, moist inside and smells so good the kitten tried to nick it off our plates. Armed with that resounding vote of confidence I offer it up as the latest in my occasional series on edible fast food cooked at home.
I’ll be offering a lower-fat alternative in a few weeks time – but this is the real deal. So give the gurning American military gent a miss and try cooking this at home.
It may sound weird to put a lid on the pan when you’re shallow frying but it gives good results in terms of speed and juiciness (a method for which I thank Laurie Colwin).
Southern Fried Chicken
This is never going to be a diet dish but to reduce the overall fat content you can take the skin off the chicken. Cook it on the bone for maximum flavour, although I confess I used boned thighs here.
Ingredients:
Around 300ml buttermilk
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp salt
8 pieces of free-range chicken (drumsticks and/or thighs)
150g plain flour
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp cayenne
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tspn dried oregano
Vegetable oil for frying
Method:
Mix the Worcestershire sauce into the buttermilk in a bowl with a teaspoon of the salt. Add the chicken and make sure it’s submerged. Cover and put in the fridge for anything from 2-8 hours. If you’re in a hurry you can dunk the chicken in the mix just before flouring. You’ll lose some of the tanginess and juiciness but it’ll still taste good.
Remove the chicken from the fridge half an hour before you want to eat to get it back to room temperature.
Put the flour into a large flat dish and add the remaining salt, the black pepper, paprika and cayenne and the oregano. Stir well to mix.
Remove the chicken from the buttermilk, give each joint a good shake to remove most of the marinade then dunk them a piece at a time in the seasoned flour to coat thoroughly. Remove with tongs and put onto a plate.
Heat 1.5 cm of oil in a large, deep frying pan with a lid until it’s hot enough to brown a cube of bread almost immediately (about 170C).
Put the chicken in one layer in the pan (you may have to do this in batches) and put the lid on. Turn the heat down low and simmer for six minutes, then turn the chicken over, trying not to dislodge the coating, cover again and cook for a further six minutes.
Take the lid off, turn the heat up and fry until the chicken is a deep golden brown all over. Drain on a rack above kitchen paper and allow to cool slightly before eating.
Try it with baked potatoes and this fresh and easy sweetcorn salad. Just mix together the following ingredients and dress with a drizzle of olive oil, a teaspoon of cider vinegar, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar:
Sweetcorn Salad (serves 4)
Ingredients:
1 x 300g tin of sweetcorn
1 red or green pepper, deseeded and chopped to the size of the corn kernels
2-3 tomatoes, deseeded and chopped as before
1/4 small red onion (optional), finely chopped
2 sprigs of basil, leaves plucked and torn
Vinaigrette, as above
Oh-ho, this looks (finger-lickin’) good! It doesn’t look too spicy either – is it? I’ve always thought about fried chicken for the small people but they start crying if things are spicy (pah!) And what’s this about a kitten? I want kitten pictures smuggled into your next post. (Although the mention did jar slightly when reading this recipe because as teenagers we used to refer to a certain chain of fried chicken merchants as ‘Unlucky Fried Kitten’) 😉
Hahaha! That would be unfortunate though they do tend to stick their noses into everything. The older cat has snuck into a couple of posts already. The kitten is awaiting his debut.
And talking of small critturs, no, this isn’t spicy at all, just very savoury (assuming you’re using sweet paprika not the spicy Spanish smoked stuff).
I am posting a lower-fat oven-baked version sometime soon but this (tho potentially artery-clogging) doesn’t taste at all greasy.
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Boo-hoo, I have just had a very bad fried chicken fail, culminating in me chucking it all in the bin and sending the other half out to one of Tooting’s finest fried chicken emporium’s for reinforcements 🙁 At least I have salad.
Oh no! I’m so sorry. Er – it wasn’t my recipe, was it?
Haha, no! I remembered yours and turned to it for help when things were going wrong but the damage was done by then! The home-made beans and coleslaw were very nice anyway. C’est la vie.
Phew! Mind you, it’s a tricky and contentious subject, fried chicken. When I did mine, half of my friends turned their noses up and said it was nothing like as good as Col. Sanders. Conor Bofin did a nice-looking version the other day over at One Man’s Meat.
I think it was the fact that mine was raw on the inside and burnt on the outside that was offending people 😉
Ah. Reminds me of the time I was spit-roasting tarragon chicken on the barbecue and one of our friends said “I think I smell burning…”