I’ve unlocked a new quarantine skill.
While everyone else has been trying to feed their sourdough starters or teach themselves to woodwork, I have mastered frying chicken.
Now, I’m sure some of you reading are thinking, “Frying chicken is not hard.” But alas! Allow me to enlighten you.
Growing up, we did eat home-cooked meals, but the fanciest my mom ever got with it was using a pre-mixed spice blend on grilled, dry chicken breasts.
So, as you might imagine, there were few special mother-daughter cooking lessons. And, to be clear, I don’t blame her — my grandma, her mother, can’t cook a lick.
Since venturing out of my parents’ house, I’ve had to learn to cook for myself and Bobby, with the help of YouTube videos and mommy blog recipes.
You know, the blog posts that begin with how their son named Tree is doing well in his judo lessons, how they’re looking forward to their family trip to Laos, and somehow, tying that into a recipe about how to use an unripe avocado and half a lemon to make lobster thermidor.
Honestly, bless them — I’ve found the best banana bread recipes on mom blogs.
Anyway, I digress. I found the inspiration to start frying chicken after my last sad attempt months ago.
I remember breading some chicken breasts, putting a lot of oil in a high-walled pan, and not waiting until it was hot enough to toss them in.
Of course, this left me with soggy chicken, which Bobby and I ate begrudgingly because, hey, it’s still food.
This time, though, I was determined to do better. The inspiration came from Bobby, who was having a particularly tough week at work. I wanted to make him feel better.
What better way than with comfort food?
I settled on Nashville hot chicken, since I know it’s one of his favorites. After work Monday, I ran to Kroger and bought bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, buttermilk and Tabasco sauce.
I wasn’t messing around.
Then, I went home and pulled up the recipe I found from Bon Appetit detailing how to double-dredge the chicken in flour and eggy-Tabasco-milk batter, then frying it up.
I don’t have a deep fryer, nor do I have a Dutch oven, so I settled on my massive stockpot to make do.
I poured in my vegetable oil and waited for it to heat up, then put in my first thigh as a tester.
The tester is something I learned from my grandma, whose first pancake, bacon, hamburger, you name it, was burnt.
Mistake number one: I didn’t monitor the oil temp after I dropped in the chicken. It kept climbing, and then it started smoking.
I got really, really scared, because I thought it might burst into flames and start a grease fire, so I grabbed the pot and ran over to my patio like a crazy woman.
I flung open the patio door and set it outside for a minute. The oil still looked like it was boiling after a long time.
I had the lid and a long pair or tongs on hand in case it spontaneously combusted and I had to play firefighter.
The chicken was cooked well, though!
I fried the thighs and spread a Nashville hot spice oil mix over the chicken, with six tablespoons of cayenne for a less-than-comfortable kick of heat.
I served it with the traditional white bread and pickle on the side.
Bobby loved the food, and it certainly helped to calm him down and have a better start to the week than he had set out to do originally.
Plus, he did all of the dishes afterward, so it was a win for me, too.
August 22, 2020 at 11:00AM
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Fried Chicken
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