Expert: Jennifer Bartholomew - 8/23/2002

Question
Jennifer

A group of my buddies are getting together and we plan to deep fry some chicken.  Can you reccomend a coating to put on the chicken and at what temp. should we cook the chicken. Also, how long should we cook it.  Most everybody says we should use a cooking oil but for the taste I am thinking of using lard, any comments on this.

Thanks

David Elliott

Answer
Hi David,

Traditional Southern fried chicken is just tossed directly in seasoned flour - this gives you a thin crisp crust and is very easy. Crunchy fried chicken with a thick crust is dipped first in egg, then in the flour mixture, so it's a little more complicated but not hard. Below are two recipes so you can choose. Both are based on 1 medium sized chicken (about 3.5 lbs) but you can multiply it up depending on the volume of chicken.

Start the Southern Fried chicken when the oil is at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, then turn it down to 300 degrees when all the chicken pieces are bubbling in the oil. It will take about 20 minutes to cook. For the Crunchy chicken, don't turn the temperature down but keep it at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes.

Lard does make the tastiest fried chicken, no question! Frying with it does make the kitchen smell like roast pork for a week though. Don't use corn oil or sunflower oil as the smell becomes very strong and unpleasant in a deep fryer. Your best bet, if you don't want to use lard, is a vegetable shortening that says right on the bottle or box that it's suitable for deep frying. Surprisingly, in this case, cheaper is better- the cheapest vegetable oils tend to have the mildest flavour. Buy a fresh bottle- oil that's even a little bit stale gets very, very smelly in a fryer even if it's still OK for other cooking uses.

General tip: If you are using fresh clean oil, the crust of the first few pieces will probably not turn brown- as you cook more pieces, the increased carbohydrates in the oil will cause later pieces to darken faster. It's just colour- it doesn't mean they're cooking faster. If you aren't sure whether a chicken piece is cooked, take out the meat and stick a sharp knife in until it touches bone. Clear juice should come out. If you get pink juice, or no juice, cook it another few minutes and try again.

Southern Fried Chicken Coating
Toss the chicken in a mixture consisting of:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
small pinch cayenne pepper (optional)

When the chicken is thoroughly coated, you may wish to let it dry on a wire rack for 1/2 hour. This gives it a much firmer crust that is less likely to fall off during cooking.

Crunchy Fried Chicken
Toss the chicken parts in a bowl containing the following ingredients, which should already be thoroughly mixed:
2 large eggs
1/3 cup of milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Then make up the flour mixture from the Southern Fried Chicken recipe in a mid-sized mixing bowl, and dip the eggy chicken one piece at a time in it. Spoon flour over the chicken until it's thoroughly coated (it helps if one person holds the flour spoon, and the other moves the eggy chicken, so that the person with egg-covered hands doesn't make a big mess!). Then carefully transfer the chicken, one piece at a time, directly into the deep fryer.