Fried chicken

[Walden]

I don't care too much for this store-bought fried chicken that people eat nowadays.

When I was a child my mother fried it herself in a cast iron skillet. That was the good stuff. Lots of pieces for everybody. The store-bought chicken has only four kinds of pieces: legs, thighs, wings, and breasts. Mama cut it like Grandma did. Besides those, there was a back piece, and there was a pulley-bone piece. If I was lucky she'd fry the neck, liver, heart and gizzard too.

There was a greater crunchy to meat/bone ratio that way. You didn't have to fry the flavor out in order to get it good and done, like they do with the store-bought white meat. That stuff gets cooked so dry and flavorless, and still not done in the middle. Disgusting.

[Doug_Tipple]

The chicken neck has the most succulent meat of the whole chicken. I pick it apart and suck the meat, neck bone by neck bone. My wife is not impressed. And when you are done with the pickin, boil the bones and make soup.

[lixnaw]

Work away boy,
http://www.ehow.com/how_2713_bake-chicken.html
and bon appetite Walden!

[Walden]

Do people actually bake chickens?

[Pammy]

Has anyone tried the chicken where you get a tin of beer, drink half, then wedge the chicken on top of the half filled beer tin and roast it in the oven.
I have the recipe but haven't tried it yet.

[TC]

Has anyone tried the chicken where you get a tin of beer.........

We do that on on the grill with a spicy-herb rub and call it "Beer Butt Chicken".
Maybe not an appetizing name, but the chicken ends up moist and tasty.

Walden- some folks in Maryland fry the necks and backs. Mostly on our eastern shore.

[mutepointe]

We always had KFC growing up, so I don't know any better. Kroger's makes good fried chicken. They sell rotisserie (I know that isn't spelled right) chicken. My family bought those when I was a kid too. When I first got married, I bought those and my wife thought they were the strangest thing to buy, until she ate one. Now they're sold everywhere. Back then, you had to know a place.

I bake whole chickens, especially in the winter when I want to heat the house extra warm. The first day, we eat the skin and the dark meat. The second day, we eat the breasts and I make chicken salad for sandwiches.

[dwest]

Love fried chicken, can't eat fried chicken, life is the pits. But I roast chicken that has been salted and allowed to dry in the fridge for about twelve hours, good stuff.

[Dale]

I do love fried chicken and have the extra body mass as a result. My mother made the best, of course, and cast iron's the only way to make it work.

That said, careful shopping will yield some pretty good store-prepared fried chicken. Many of the southern Winn-Dixies have good stuff and the Publix fried chicken is quite good.

I

[dfernandez77]

My grandmother used to save bacon grease to fry chicken in. Battered and fried in a huge cast iron skillet. It was wonderful!

[gonzo914]

My grandmother used to save bacon grease to fry chicken in. battered and fried in a huge cast iron skillet. It was wonderful!

Ah, the old can of bacon grease on the back of the stove. You could fry a battered dirt clod in it, and it would be tasty.

Mother gonzo used to fix chcken just like Walden described -- cut into 10 pieces with a back and a pulley bone. I much prefer it to 8-cut. I also like the fried heart, gizzard and liver.

But now, when I make fried chicken at home, I just get boneless breasts and pound them out so they're about the size of a dessert plate, then bread thickly and fry.

It is best to leave the lid on when frying.

[mutepointe]

Funny story about the grease pit:
When I was first out on my own, I started my own grease pit in a coffee can. When I filled the coffee can to the top, I would gently warm the can until the grease would liquify. Then I would pour all the grease down the drain and start again. One time my wife saw me doing this and said, What the @#$% are you doing? So I explained. She further explained that the grease pit is thrown in the garbage can and a person starts a new one. When I tell people this story, they ask if we ever had plumbing problems. We moved around a lot when we were first married, six times in six years, so we never stayed around long enough to find out.

[dwest]

It is best to leave the lid on when frying.

My MIL use to save goose fat for frying, it was exceptional. Growing up I saved all the fat from cooking for the winter birds. When I fry stuff nowadays I use either canola oil, avocado oil or grapeseed oil, all have a faitly high smoke point and in the case of the grapeseed oil it adds no flavor to the food. Avocado oil adds flavor but with the right food it can be quite tasty. If I fried chicken today I'd brown it well before reducing the heat and covering the pan.

[Jayhawk]

Walden, if you're even in Kansas City or Wichita, you need to go eat at Strouds. http://www.stroudsrestaurant.com/index.html

While they don't cut the chicken the way you'd like, they still pan fry in cast iron skillets...best chicken this side of my grandmother's I've ever found (she'd go out and get a, ahem, "fresh" chicken from the yard).

In KC, the north location has much, much better food. The original south location (in a 1920s or 30s roadhouse) was torn down for an overpass, and the new location just isn't as good. We had our office lunch at the north location last week, and the food is still stellar there.

Eric

[The Weekenders]

It's been all downhill since Shake-n-Bake. My long-since-departed mother used an electric skillet but it came out as Walden describes. In terms of texture and taste, KFC is nothing like what she made. While on vacation last summer, we stopped in for an ice cream at a place in Weaverville (far north Calif) that has "Broasted" chicken. It took me back, because I remember when it was a big deal to go out and get this, it was a limited franchise using some kind of patented machine. I remember that I still thought my mother's chicken was better.

I basically have a void in my life in terms of fried chicken. I don't prepare it and I think KFC is over-priced and not that good anyway. I know I could cook some up but I know its not good for my increasing bodymass. The other thing is that I could make it, but I really have a problem pouring a ton of oil into a pan, then having to toss it (don't have the bio-diesel still set up and I don't own a diesel vehicle).

As for beer-can chicken: Williams-Sonoma makes a VERY nice round rack that holds an equivalent "can" to put liquid in while you're cooking. I use it on my infrared outside grill. I have tried beer, pineapple, chicken broth in the can part and it comes out really good. The whole thing is stainless. The only rub is that you have to put another pan underneath to catch the grease. I bought a cheap aluminum disposable pan for that.