Legendary Southern Fried Chicken
Does anyone else find fried chicken totally irresistible? My mouth is watering just writing this. I love fried chicken. I share this passion with my wife, which means that many of our meal choices involve that delectable fowl. Over the years we have collected a surprising number of recipes for preparing chicken for the table. As I think through my mental list of family chicken dishes, I can’t think of one that I don’t just adore.
For instance, the chicken and rice dish we had for dinner last night is not technically “fried chicken,” but I put it in the same category. There were succulent pieces of chicken floating on top of a scrumptious bed of savory rice. Oh my friends, it was an offering worth of heaven. Fortunately, heaven was not too hungry last night so we ate it on their behalf and it tasted—heavenly.
One of the things we had in our mind as we migrated south to Georgia was the opportunity to eat some legendary southern fried chicken. Ironically it has not been that easy to find. Georgia ranks fifth in the nation in chicken production according to my quick Internet search. That would seem to be auspicious for fried chicken lovers, right? Wrong! Evidently frying up a chicken the old-fashioned way is no longer chic. Now you have to filet the breast, coat it in some kind of secret batter, deep fry it, and then serve it on a bun or in a variety of finger-friendly shapes.
I went into a locally owned restaurant that advertised southern-style food to order take-out. I ordered the fried chicken meal they had fancily chalked on their specials board. I said that I preferred dark meat.
“Oh sir,” the polite fellow behind the counter said, “our chicken special is a breast filet served on a bed of rice.”
See what I mean? Incidentally, the deep-fried prawns from that restaurant were fabulous. But our hunt for the truly legendary southern fried chicken had to continue.
On a tip, I pursued my search for southern fried chicken at the local Publix grocery store. After several minutes of socially distanced waiting in line at the delicatessen counter, I asked the server for an eight-piece order of dark chicken. When I looked down at what was under the glass on the counter, I only saw tiny bits of deep-fried popcorn chicken and long thin chicken strips. I thought I was going to have to go for the deep-fried shrimp again, but the kind fellow led me to a self-serve warmer case where I could get a box of dark chicken pieces that were indeed fried. They weren’t any different from the boxes we grabbed from Hyvee in Sioux Falls back in the Midwest. Good enough, but the hunt for legendary southern fried chicken continues.
I’m still mystified by the trend to only offer breast filets at so-called chicken restaurants. My current theory is that many people don’t really know what a chicken is. They think that when you cook a chicken it collapses into a flat piece of white meat or falls apart into little chunks. They did not get my early education in this matter.
During my growing up years, my family used a number of methods for supplying meat for the hungry people who gathered at our dinner table. During my first-grade year in school, my parents took on a daring venture in this vein by purchasing 200 tiny chicks. I distinctly remember the difficulties of raising them. For example, we needed to install a warming hood so they wouldn’t freeze in the capricious March weather in Idaho. Keeping them fed and watered was a constant chore. Cleaning the pen was a regular task so that the manure didn’t ball up on their little feet dragging them down to be trampled by their pen mates. Chickens, in spite of the usual connotations about their name, can be quite fierce, callous, and deadly to each other.
In the end, a large majority of the flock survived to adulthood. After the hens were selected to provide a steady supply of eggs, there were well over 100 chickens remaining who were destined to take up residence in our family freezer. My mother assumed the role of their chief travel agent, and my seven-year-old self was designated her assistant.
As I think back on this event in my life I’m confident that there are those who would consider this a form of child abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth. Helping over 100 chickens find their way into our winter larder remains a memorable, formative, and educational experience for me. At that early age, I learned the cost of life required for me to have meat to eat. I repeated the process of executing, scalding, plucking, dressing, and dismembering chicken numerous times alongside my mother.
My mother was a tender-hearted individual and I think it cost her something to bring about the deaths of so many creatures. However, when it came to providing food for her family she was absolutely fierce—a true mother wolf. A mother wolf who wanted her cub to learn useful things for life. To this day I can identify healthy cuts of chicken at a meat counter, and I can buy a whole chicken and turn it into pieces for frying.
My early lessons in butchering have paid great dividends again and again. And all without denting my intense culinary love for fried chicken in the least. In fact, I think it’s at the foundation of my current dislike of the trend of disguising chicken in the fast-food environment. Real chicken needs identifiable pieces with bones in them. Anything else is subject to suspicion.
So, to date, my desire for legendary southern fried chicken remains unrequited. But I have not given up the search, and I have a backup plan. My wife makes delightful fried chicken which has come down through her Nordic family tradition. I know that seems the opposite of Southern, but if she cooks it in Georgia, it would technically count as Southern Fried Chicken. Don’t you think that would be legendary?