1 post tagged “fried chicken double bind gravy”

(L here) The reasons to love fried chicken are infinite.  Crunchy skin, juicy meat, a topping of gravy, the inevitable mashed potatoes, the ambrosia-like nature of cold fried chicken as a midnight snack....I could go on.

Fried chicken exists in one form or another in cuisines all over the world - it keeps for a long time, travels well, and poultry was often more widely available than other livestock.  Usually my fried chicken is Southern in origin and fairly basic.  Key ingredients are buttermilk (for brining), flour, paprika, some salt and pepper...something like Alton Brown's.  I'll usually double batter in the flour, with an egg bath in between. 

fried chicken

From those ingredients, you can make a half ass fried chicken with crumbly or soggy skin and rubbery meat.  The key to excellence is patience, time, and a willingless to use a hell of a lot of cooking fat at an even temperature (vegetable oil , shortening...something with a higher smoking temperature, or else your fire alarm will go off.  Not that that ever happens in my house).  I've embarked on "oven frying" in the past, but my method involve a stick of butter in and around the chicken - hardly a healthier move. 

The last but most vital step is gravy.  Yesterday R made a brilliant comment: "I never realized until I met you that the bits of food stuck to the bottom of the pan are just tastiness waiting to be released into the world."  Like clapping your hands to keep Tinkerbell alive in Peter Pan, you have to scrape away at the chicken schmutz (not schmaltz), throw in some flour, salt and pepper, and, once they're in a nice paste, stir in flour, water, or chicken broth (depending on how you want your gravy).  I have yet to meet a food that didn't beg to be dipped in some kind of sauce or gravy.  R thinks this is a quaint French affectation on my part, but really it's just Southern genes.  Wait til I get into tabasco.

My book club recently met to discuss The Double Bind and had to put together food in the theme of "double" (twice baked potatoes, double fudge brownies...) to sustain ourselves during the highly intellectual discussion (right).  TDB makes constant allusions to The Great Gatsby, one of my read-once-a-year books, so I had to make "double" fried chicken to go along (one of my favorite TGG scenes: "Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of ale.... They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or ale-and yet they weren't unhappy either."  What they're eating and the setting, given their usual elegance and snobbishness, says a lot about the scene and their need to be in an absolute comfort zone.  I should mention that Daisy is from Louisville).

Double-frying is a method used in Korean Fried chicken--cooking the chicken through, removing it from the heat to cool for ten minutes, and then putting it back in hot oil to get an extra crispy crust.  My favorite part was using minced onions IN THE BATTER.  I've fried chicken IN a saute of onions before, but never thought of marrying the two in one amazing combo.  

Now if only I could come up with a way to make fried fried.