Deep Fried Southern Chicken
August 31, 2008

Andy has convinced me to finally get off my ass and get together my fried chicken expedition for presentation. Om nomie presentation. This is a more traditional Southern fried chicken, so its based off of corn meal instead of your usual fried chicken. It gives it a nice gritty feeling to the breading, instead of a smooth consistent texture that you get from a flour breading. This is also a relatively fast to prepare meal, short of the "marination" of the meat.

Ingredients

• 1 Whole Chicken
• Buttermilk
• 2 Eggs
• Chili Powder
• Paprika
• Red Chili Flakes
• Corn Meal
• A Boatload of Canola Oil

What to serve it with? I cheated and served this along-side a premixed bag of biscuit mix. You'll also notice in some of my pictures a curious item to deep fry, but there were also some delicious deep fried pickles. Emily wasn't fond of them, but I certainly enjoyed them.

The Method - Preparation

The only real time consuming part of this recipe is "marinating" the chicken. You need to go ahead and chop up your chicken into its appropriate pieces and get it into a bowl before you begin crafting up the delicious marinade.

By marinating the chicken for at least 8 hours beforehand, you're going to be making it extra moist and flavorful while enhancing its ability to receive breading. Go ahead and fill up your bowl of chicken with buttermilk and break in two eggs. Stir it all up and massage the chicken along the way to help everything make its way in.

This is also a great chance to season the chicken itself, so you should also go ahead and put in a teaspoon each of paprika, chili powder and red chili flakes. Mix it up and massage it all in again.

That's it. Wrap it up and stick in your fridge for at least 8 hours before moving on to the breading stage.

The Method - Breading

Breading the chicken is pretty simple, setup a quick assembly line with your chicken, a bowl of corn meal and a cookie sheet all laid out from left to right. In your corn meal, you should mix in a teaspoon each of chili powder, paprika, chili flakes, salt and pepper. This fried chicken's going to have a bit of a kick. :)

Just take your chicken pieces out of the marinade and slop 'em around in the breading making sure to completely coat each piece. If you have a kitty handy, you might have to rebread a couple pieces. Once you've gotten it breaded, just pop it onto your cookie sheet to await frying.

The Method - FRYING!

Get a big pot full of canola oil heated up uncovered on medium high. If you have a frying thermometer, heat it up to 350F - or if you're like me and don't have one, heat it up until it bubbles when you stick a wooden implement into it.

Once you've got the oil all heated up, you need to start putting your chicken in. Smoothly lay it in slightly pulling away from you to prevent spattering oil from getting you. If your oil doesn't start acting up and bubbling around, its not quite hot enough yet and you should take your chicken out and wait for it to get hot.

Don't overload your pot, you'll probably need to do it in batches so don't worry if it all doesn't fit. Let each piece go for about ten minutes or until happily browned and an internal temp of 165F has been reached.

As you finish your chicken, put it onto a cookie sheet lined with paper towels and then cover it with paper towels to help absorb some of the excess oil.

Om. Nom.

That was some damned good chicken. Thanks to the marinating before hand, every piece came out juicy and tender with some good flavor and kick. I did up some pickles the same way I did the chicken, minus the marinade, and they ended up being pretty darned tasty. My one complaint, was afterwards I had absolutely no idea what to do with all the oil.

If you'd like to see more pics, you can check out my recent photoset up on Flickr.