On the final Sunday of June, in spite of the heat, it was a good day for outside pursuits of a recreational kind, including swimming at Mookie and Kristen's place and then a 12-mile bike ride on the trails and greenway that are reasonably close to the house. None of that exertion could overcome the deleterious effects of the incredibly unhealthy dinner choice I made that night: fried chicken and mac 'n cheese. It's an exceedingly rare menu here—I don't fry much of anything, for the most part, and I've had to mostly let go of the former frequency of mac 'n cheese as a recurring and popular side dish.
This was not the simple route to fried chicken that, say, my mother might have done in that small kitchen in Buies Creek in the 1970s. A spiced buttermilk brine, an overnight soak, a spiced breading mixture with the extra effort to shake off excess flour with a fine-mesh sieve (another dish to clean up!), a potently hot first deep fry and a short oven bake on a rack, chilling time in the fridge, and a second deep fry for an extra crunchy exterior.
Unfortunately, I discovered belatedly that my upper oven has developed a glitch, and the broiler element is turning itself on and staying on, and so all that extra labor to follow this recipe for a perfect result was brutally derailed with a serious burning and charring of the crispy fried skin, and a slight drying out of the chicken thighs. With all the muss and fuss, the health cost, and the nonetheless unremarkable result, I'd much rather stick with my deviled chicken thighs that are so much easier, much more dependable, and perfectly delicious. Perhaps the flavors don't quite penetrate into the meat as well, but I happen to really like unenhanced baked chicken just fine.
"The Best Southern Fried Chicken," by J. Kenji López-Alt, former culinary director of SeriousEats.com. [Updated 25 June 2020]
"Willie Mae's Mac and Cheese," shared by Willie Mae's Scotch House of New Orleans via Good Morning America. [Published 19 May 2020]
No comments:
Post a Comment