After 30 years of marriage I finally managed to make delicious fried chicken last week. It was so good I can’t wait to make it again.
I haven’t tried to fry chicken in years, but when we were first married I tried until I finally gave up. The first time I ever attempted it the chicken was beautiful when I took it out of the frying pan but after I set it on our plates it became obvious it was no where near done. Other times I would cook it too fast and too long and burn the outside in spots.
I finally started baking my fried chicken 🙂 and we’ve been pleased with it to the point that I lost my desire to ever try to fry chicken again until last fall.
I was flipping through Ronni Lundy’s cookbook Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken when I landed on the recipe for Honest Fried Chicken. She made it sound so easy that I decided after all these years I should try my hand at fried chicken once again.
It took me several months to get around to making Ronni’s recipe, but my was it worth the wait.
- 2 pounds cut-up chicken
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
- canola oil, 1/2 inch in pan (I used avocado oil)
Wash chicken pieces and trim visible clumps of fat. Put flour, salt, and pepper in a clean plastic or paper sack and shake to mix. Put skillet on a high flame and add canola oil 1/2 inch deep.
As the oil heats, shake each piece of chicken—one or two pieces at a time—in the bag of flour until coated. Lay chicken in the hot oil, with the skin side down. (If you are frying mixed pieces of chicken instead of all breasts or thighs, put the largest pieces in the pan first.) You can nest the pieces fairly close together. When the skillet is full, turn heat down to medium and let chicken fry until it’s just golden and crispy, then turn and let the second side get just golden.
Reduce heat to low, cover and cook 25 minutes. (Check occasionally to make sure the heat is not too high and the chicken browning too fast or burning). Remove lid and turn pieces over once more. Turn heat up a bit—but not to too high—and cook a few minutes longer until crust is crisped all around. (If crust on the sides of the breasts is till soft and mushy, turn those pieces on their side in the oil for a minute or two so they can fry up crisp.)
—Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken written by Ronni Lundy.
Once the chicken was done I made gravy from the drippings. I think the gravy was the best part of the meal and that’s saying a lot considering we had slaw, biscuits with jelly, our home canned beans, and perfectly cooked fried chicken.
Last night’s video: Planting Taters in the Wind.
Tipper
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I kinda wonder if it’s becoming one of those lost arts. My mother and grandmothers’ was always so good, I took it for granted and didn’t think it was anything I needed to learn- I would just naturally make good fried chicken. Um, nope! Like you, just didn’t realize how long it actually takes. And in the same generation, along came Publix, like someone else mentioned, plus Church’s Fried Chicken, and pretty soon you could get good fried chicken all over the place. From pressure fryers, I believe. Then you start wondering why you should get grease and flour all over the kitchen when they did it better anyways! BUT, they don’t do that gravy, now do they?? We had rice under ours. So once in awhile, in the spirit of good Sunday dinner, I’m going for it! Enjoyed your post, even if I am a little bit mad at it for making me want to go make some.
Wow! That sounds so good! I’ve never been happy with my attempts at frying chicken either. So I saved this recipe, and I’ll have to try it! Thank you Tipper!
Chicken gravy is my favorite. The next time you have baked white sweet potatoes put some butter on them and ladle some chicken gravy over them. You won’t be disappointed. Blessings.
Chicken gravy is my favorite. When you have baked sweet potatoes put some butter on them and ladle some chicken gravy over the potatoes. You won’t be disappointed. Blessings.
I’ve been married 50 years this year and have fried chicken all those years. My grannies were excellent cooks and I watched them over the years frying it. I have high cholesterol so I started the “healthier “ oils till a few years ago. I went back to Rendering my lard and cooking with it again. All those “healthy “ oils and medicine didn’t help my cholesterol so I went back to my hillbilly diet! My fried chicken can stand up to any famous chef. And my cholesterol is still the same as it was on the oils. Bacon grease is the best oil ever. Thanks Tipper for your advice! I love your channel!
Wonderful !!! That sounds delicious!!!
I have never successfully made good fried chicken & quit trying a long time ago . But ! I think you may have inspired me to try again ! Thank you !
My mother and her mother made Kansas farm chicken fried to perfection. Both used corn oil, which is not in style these days. But I bet the chicken tastes different if it isn’t used. Dad would sometimes eat that chicken gravy (40 weight, he called it!) on torn up white bread.
I’m 61 years old and I’ve never been able to make good fried chicken either. More embarrassingly, I’m a classically trained chef! You’ve convinced me to try again! Thanks for the recipe and the inspiration! ☮️
the picture makes my mouth water—grandma raised chickens just for butchering and eating on all year (she would get about 100 white leghorn chicks every spring and by the time the school year was about over with it was time to start butchering (anywhere from 3-5) every weekend when I would be there to help her and my aunt who is a year younger than me….she of course butchered other days of the week too but unfortunately I was not there to join in the ‘fun’ as I was home doing all the chores that was on my daily scheduled list (cook breakfast, di dishes, clean, cook lunch, do dishes, if berries and plums were ripe go picking, come back cook supper, do dishes and then if there was still day light left off to fish for a while. There was seven of us kids, me in the middle-and mom and dad…..I did more work around the house before I was in the first grade than most teenagers bother doing today. I think I have told you before that I too had difficult frying chicken as good as grandma’s until a lady taught me to use self rising flour, cook slow with lid on it then when browned turn chicken and put lid back on it—growing up my experience was if you put the lid on something you were frying then it was mushy not crunchy…….the dear sweet lady proved to me that it can be done….now if I just had one of the birds grandma raised a frying in the skillet I would be happy and anxious for it to get done
I believe homemade fried chicken gravy would make ice cream taste better
Mama fried chicken like that, but she also let the raw chicken sit in a bowl of buttermilk before frying.
Two suggestions:
1) Instead of flour use pancake mix flour.
2) Use one of those ‘stick it in, instant read thermometers’ to check internal temperature and you’ll never undercook chicken (or anything else) again.
I use seasoned bread crumbs.
Add some potato starch if you like it extry crunchy.
I’m not at all certain what everything is on the plate in the picture posted but I am certain that I’d pull up a chair say grace and dig into it!
Try frying in tallow, so good (and healthy).
Congratulations. It’s a real art that I’ve yet to learn. Takes patience & practice to get it just right.
I’ve fried chicken a couple of times but it was never great…it was good but not great. I have a bad habit of over cooking meat. I’ve gotten ahold of undercooked meat a time or 2 and I just can’t stand it…the thought of eating half raw meat…yuck! So therefore I habitually overcook all meats lol. I actually like mine that way now but my husband says his teeth can’t take it much longer haha. I’ll have to give this recipe a try and stick to the cooking times because it looks delicious
This sounds delicious! In my past I failed at ever making good fried chicken, no matter how many different recipes I’ve used. I finally just started using Shake-n-Bake and my family loved it. I never tried frying chicken again.
I’ve only tried frying chicken once and it was brown on the outside and still pink on the inside. so, I never did it again. but I think I will give this recipe a try sometime. Thanks for sharing it!
Use a meat thermometer. Pink doesn’t always mean it’s not done. 165ºF or over is done. Much over that and the meat starts to lose its juiciness.
It looks delicious on the plate! I’m so happy that you tried frying chicken again. I don’t fry it anymore but this recipe sure sounds like a winner. Before you know it, little Ira and Woodrow will be chomping down on some of Grandma’s fried chicken!!
Morning, Tipper! Chicken has always defeated me, too. My late husband could fry chicken to perfection and I miss eating it with the kind of meal you described!! It makes me want to try frying it again so this week I think, like you, I’ll have another go!! Please tell Granny I send her best wishes. I pray God watches over all of us!
I’m so happy you had success with the fried chicken recipe. This is exactly how my grandmother taught me how to make fried chicken!
I think fried chicken can be challenging to get ‘just right’ for most of us, so congratulations Tipper on persevering. Since we raised chickens as part of all we grew, we had a chicken cooked many ways, but the gravy made from the drippings spooned over mashed taters or biscuits was always the best. (for some reason I am wanting fried chicken & gravy for breakfast!! 🙂 )
That looks and sounds great. When I make fried chicken I soak the clean chicken in beaten eggs,salt and pepper then I cover with flour before I fry it. It makes a thick crunchy coating.
I never could get that right, I either over fry it or not enough, so it’s just marinated chicken breasts on the grill for me.
The secret to good fried chicken is a cast iron skillet. You can’t get the same effect in a non-stick pan.
Oooh, good fried chicken! I used to fry chicken in my deep cast iron skillet many years ago, but now I can’t buy chicken I’d want to eat – the last packages from the grocery store had such an odd smell I returned them. And I can’t get to the farmers markets these days. I’m hoping my neighbor who sells me home-raised pork will branch out into chickens one of these days.
I can pretty much take chicken or leave it. I prefer beef most always. But you had me wanting some of what you made. I reckon that about says it all for me. Good for you, now you know you can. There is something really satisfying about mastering any difficult skill. It really builds you up in a good way, not proud as in better than others but quietly pleased and grateful.
My mother, from eastern Ky makes the best fried chicken you ever ate. We had chickens when I was growing up and mom would go out, grab a chicken, wring its neck and chop its head off. She made me help pluck the feathers off. For some reason this made me kind of sick to my stomach and I couldn’t eat the fried chicken or chicken and dumplings. She would get mad at me. It was later when we didn’t raise chickens that I could eat the chicken bought from the store and fried or used in other recipes. We had people come for dinner and brag on her fried chicken and want mom’s recipe. To this day I have a hard time handling the raw chicken and my fried chicken is not as good as hers. This is coming from someone who was a nurse 40+ years and saw a lot of gross things. Mom has told me that slowly frying the chicken is the secret. Looks like you have won the battle Tipper of frying good chicken.
That is the way my mama fixed it (except for egg and buttermilk dip before battering).
We still experiment using the deep fryer and am wanting to try a recipe called “double fried chicken” where the bird goes through a double battering and frying process. I will post the results here when I try it. I imagine these storms we are having as I type this at 8:00 a.m. (CST) will be over in north “Georgie” shortly. So far there have been under a T-storm and a tornado watch while some counties a little SW of us have had a tornado warning. The squaw line is just past us and now it is lot of rain and still some “blue jade” lightning now and again.
Yum! Sounds so good. Reminds me of a meal my Mammaw Coleman would make
Since writing my first comment, I have read the older post about “dinner on the grounds,” since I am a true blue Southern Baptist, dinners like this remind me of fried chicken. At our old church building, we had a large picnic shed with two long rows of joined together tables. Along with all the fried chicken and other things brought to these dinners, I remember when two #2 tin wash tubs would be on the end table of one row, one would be full of tea and the other true lemonade made from lemons, not today’s powdered mixes. Each tub would have a large block of ice in them. All of the tea and lemonade brought from the individuals would be poured together into these tubs. The ice would be bought from the ice plant at Honea Path, SC. Pronounced Honey Path, nicknamed Sugar Foot. Remember when every town had an ice plant. We built and moved in to our modern church building in 1965, it has an inside social hall. Back then all of the food at these dinners was home cooked, none of it bought at a store.
Tipper, your fried chicken looks delicious to me and I fancy myself an expert in fried chicken, although I got nothing to back to back it up, but talk and almost 6 decades of tasting and looking. I learned this trick from an Amish lady. Fry that chicken yall and get it golden on each side. Then pack those pieces of covered, divine yard bird in the oven at 375 and finish it off. It will be done and done! Your yard bird will be juicier and moister than can be! And as the old song said “take a load off Annie-take a load for free. Take a load off Annie and put the Lord right on me!” In other words, if it’s easier and less worry, count me in! I fried chicken myself yesterday, but why is my chicken in linear strands???? I just don’t think it’s chicken and it doesn’t smell or act like chicken and by the lines, etc it looks like PRINTED MEAT… pray before you eat cause only God knows what it is if it ain’t your chicken raised by you…
Your picture makes me hungry this morning. I love fried chicken and homemade gravy over biscuits or mashed potatoes just makes it a perfect meal. We had a ton of rain and lots of thunder and lightning all night. I hope everyone was safe during the storms that took place in many states. Take care everyone.
Miss Tipper, Your dinner sounded so good. Wish I’d been there. My Grandma Ruby, my sweet mother in law and my momma’s chicken was always perfect. They never failed to make the best chicken. I never mastered cooking chicken as good, just fair to middling, but will never give up trying to. LOL. Blessings to all.
Her fried chicken is the one thing that everyone remembers most about my mother and I will try this recipe just in case it comes close. I don’t expect to ever top what Mother could do.
I love good home fried chicken, I haven’t made any in a while, so I just might make some this week.
Sounds delicious! Personally, I think good homemade gravy is the best part of any meal.
I attempted to fry chicken last week too. It was good and done on the outside, but I had to put it all in the oven to finish off. It turned out so very good and so juicy.
That photo is making my mouth water! I am like you and have baked my fried chicken for a while. I never could get it to cook all the way through. I’ve never heard of Ronni Lundy and hurried over to my library app just now. They don’t have the book you mentioned but I put her book, Victuals, on hold! Looking forward to reading it. I’ll have to go track down the cookbook you have! It sounds wonderful.
Sounds like a real good meal, especially if the chicken was dark meat! I have now discovered the best way for me to have GOOD chicken is to buy it from my local Publix deli, if it got any better, I couldn’t stand it! At one time on a survey, it was voted the best in my area. To me, we have several grocery store deli’s that all have pretty good chicken, but none as good as in the days when Sunday chicken was a fresh killed corn fed chicken that had it’s neck wrung on Saturday, breaded and fried in a black cast iron skillet in lard rendered from our own hog.
What is a Publix?
Grocery store in SC, just like Ingles or Food Lion.
Our paternal grandmother made the best fried chicken and gravy I’ve ever eaten. She always made extra crunchy bits for the gravy and boy howdy it would make your tongue slap your brains out. I haven’t fried chicken in a really long while, but it sure sounds good!
your comment clarified things for me. my mom fried chicken but we never had gravy with it. i was trying to see how gravy could be made from all that oil, but now i see by “drippings” tipper must have meant just the crunchy bits!
i recently bought an electric skillet just so i could fry chicken like mama’s. once i grew up i never fried anything, so i’m a newbie!