How do YOU make fried chicken?

I go to the nearby fried chicken stand that comes here every tuesday and thursday.
I can get a whole chicken, juicy, deliciously marinated and grilled on a rotating spit.

THe coating varies along with the wash, but I always parboil my chicken pieces.

@Trillian Why?

I don’t, never have, ever. I am TERRIBLE at frying things, I burn the bacon, can’t make decent eggs, and all in all I’m just not meant to be a fryer. haha
I can sautee things like mushrooms, and I bake well, make great soups and sauces but frying is not my thing, at all.

So how did your mamma make it, @Coloma?

@Dutchess_III She never made it either. haha We’re not a fryer family. lol

I want to experiment with crushing up the French’s dried onions in my flour. I bet that would be GOOD! I’ll share some with you,@Coloma, you poor thing. :)

@Dutchess_III: Quick. Make the next week of classes “Show and Tell.” Have each person bring a sample of his or his mother’s fried chicken to class and have an “Eat off.” Winner gets a month’s supply of greens or a large bottle of Maalox.

@gailcalled Can’t. They’re in prison. :(

That is an river rat family secret.

@Dutchess_III: They can’t get access to the kitchen? What a wonderful rehab project this might be…

Can you get Lopez’s recipe for the Tacos de Lengua? It sounds like something I would like.

No @gailcalled. They wouldn’t want those convicted felons around hot grease and metal cooking utensils. They aren’t even supposed to have paper clips and staples. Besides, they can’t do something for them that the other 140 inmates can’t do. They eat what everyone else eats. Once I stormed into the kitchen at lunch time and (jokingly) snapped, “Since when do you feed my students Alpo???!!!” It was really ham salad but Lord, it looked JUST LIKE Alpo. They told me it was good. I wouldn’t know.

@WestRiverrat I’ll ask him….blech!

Other than the initial question and the first comment in the details, almost all of the rest of it seems like not only a racist assessment, but one of a person’s sex as well. Favored recipes for preparing food is more likely to be a cultural influence. It can also be strongly influenced by relishing a food prepared by a family member.

My mom never ever, ever used a wash. I do though. I mix the egg and milk together for a wash.

Inmates? In the kitchen? With access to cutlery? It is more likely than you think

I just dredge the chicken is flour, salt and pepper. No egg. No milk. My mother and father were both born and raised in Georgia so it is a Southern method o making fried chicken. Mine is delicious.

@Dutchess_III to ensure that the chicken is fully cooked all the way through. It generally wouldn’t be a problem with chicken strips just cut from the breast, but when you are using chicken still on the bone, frying alone doesn’t take long enough to fully cook the meat close to the bone. You can burn thew outside before it’s cooked all the way through. Pink chicken is not a good thing!

I pick up the phone & place my order.

Is this deep fried chicken? I’ve never made it.

Pan friend chicken I make very very rarely. Once a decade, maybe. I don’t remember how I make it from one time to the next, so I look up recipes and go for what looks good at the time.

@Pied_Pfeffer It was indeed a “racial” (not to be confused with ‘racist’) assessment. According to the small sampling in my classroom I learned that black people fry chicken in a different way than the white people I know. How is that ‘racist’? Or were you referring to the student who laughed at me and said, “You’re trying to tell a black man how to fry chicken!” Was he the one being racist? Or was it when I said, “I’m a woman teaching a man how to cook!” What’s the problem with playing off of stereotypes in a fun way? The truth is, when all was said and done, we all learned something and we had fun while we were learning…but you want to turn it into something ugly. Why is that?

@Trillian OIC. That can be a problem, especially if you’re used to cooking boneless chickens.

Once, years ago, I had a Vietnamese neighbor who would make me home made egg rolls because I’d helped her as best I could to study for her naturalization test. (I found out how much I don’t know about my country!!) She expertly sliced the chicken off of the bone then put it in with the other incredients. I asked “Don’t you cook the chicken first?”
She said, “You Americans! I’ve noticed that! You always cook your chicken before you cook your chicken! If you cut thin pieces of chicken it cooks in the wrap when it’s frying!”
I quite pre-cooking my chicken for things like chicken and dumplings and such after that.

My mom always put a sheet pan in a hot oven (375 I think) with a sick of margarine on it. While the margarine was melting she dredged the cut up chicken in flour, then sprinkled with salt and pepper. Put the chicken skin-side down in the pan, baked for ½ hour, turned chicken and baked another ½ hour. Don’t knock it till you try it.

Get in car. Drive to Chinese restaurant. Order sweet n sour chicken hold the sweet n sour sauce. Return home with divine fried chicken.

I don’t fry—cannot stand greasy mess in my kitchen. If you want something fried in my house you have to go buy it and bring it here.

It really depends on if I want the chicken breaded or battered. Breaded I dip in an egg wash, dreg it through the seasoned breading, then dropped in the pan. Battered it is coated in the batter and dropped straight into the hot oil.

I’m going to have to try different ways.

@Dutchess_III Out of my classroom of 11, 7 are black men and 1 is white and the rest are Hispanic. There is no reason to bring these numbers up when the question is asking how one fries chicken.

Jerry started laughing really low, and says, “Ms V! You’re telling a black man how to make fried chicken!” I am well aware of the stereotype. As a teacher, this should have been an opportunity to bust the myth. Not every person who is Black makes fried chicken, nor does their skin color mean it will result in a better formula.

NONE of my black students were familiar with putting the chicken in milk, or milk and egg. My white student said his mom always used just egg, and no milk. Why state what color a student’s skin or ethnic background is? It sounds like there is a tally by race.

Except for Lopez. Into the silence he said he was gonna make some Tacos de Lengua. I asked him what that was. He told me “tongue tacos.” I said that was DISGUSTING and all my students, except the other two Hispanics, agreed so we were back on the same page again, and a little wiser. This response by you is just as bad, if not worse. If three students agree, while off-topic, that a certain food appeals to them, why dismiss it with “That is disgusting.”

I have fun in my class. :) You may consider this fun. I just wonder if all of the students felt the same way. People in a position of potential influence, teachers being one, need to be very cautious about displaying any type of favoritism or personal opinion. They need to stick to the facts.

I said, “No, Jerry! I’m a woman telling a man how to cook so that makes me right! Again, this might be an attempt to be funny. Unfortunately, many people who reside on Earth live with the impression that women are experts at cooking and joke about “Now, just go and make me a sandwich” or “A woman’s place is barefoot and in the kitchen”. Both irritate me as they are not true. There is no reason to fuel these feelings.

I stated the color and ethnic back ground because that was the back drop to the whole story @Pied_Pfeffer.

The guy who laughed at me for telling a black man how to make fried chicken is, in fact, black himself.

Lopez has a thing about teasing me with crazy stuff. He can take me to tears in laughter as I’m trying to figure out if he’s being serious or not. He is SO good at it. I was sure that “Tongue Tacos” weren’t real (but they are,) and he knew what my reaction would be. I’ve been with these guys for a year now, longer than a classroom teacher ever has with a classroom. We know each other very well.

Furthermore, I am dealing with full grown adults, between the ages of 20 and 31. I can be freer with my comments than I can be with, say, 17 and 18 year old high school students.

Of course none of the stereotypes are true. We were ALL playing off of our own. Believe me, if I’d offended any one of them they would have let me know. They don’t have a problem with straight up telling how it is.

What it came down to is that they, and I, are going to be doing some experimenting with fried chicken in the future.

It just sucks that you turned it into something so nasty. But, fortunately, you’re all alone in your presumptions.

I just realized that _bob hasn’t been around. :( I have a samwich for him. Where is he?

I like the idea of Oven Fried Chicken This isn’t the recipe I’ve used before but the use of buttermilk is pretty common. It’s so much less messy than deep frying. I would love to hear from anyone who has a good recipe for this method. Fried Chicken is such a Southern US specialty!! Once I got a copycat recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken from, of all places, The Christian Science Monitor! I tried it but it wasn’t as good as the real thing. Oh that special blend of spices! What the hell is it?? Does anyone know the secret recipe? I’m on a diet but I could kill for some Kentucky Fried Chicken! Once in a while couldn’t hurt…

@Dutchess_III – don’t knock tongue until you try it. I was at my husband’s aunt’s house one weekend and she made tongue tacos. She didn’t say what the meat was until I told her it was great. I am not much of a meat eater but tongue – yum, yum.

It sounds as if you have a very comfortable communication process with these students, at least in your mind.

The students’ age has nothing to do with it. I never assumed that these were children you were talking about. An adult, as well as a minor, can be insulted or influenced by someone’s statement. Unfortunately, many don’t raise their hand to discuss their opinion.

I used to teach classes to adults. I respect when an opposing opinion is voiced. It brings different viewpoints out in the open. Not only may it address the concerns of others that aren’t willing to speak up, but it provides an opportunity to explain why one method or theology or whatever might be better than another. It can then be discussed rationally if there is no judgement involved. There are times when I have changed my opinion based upon these discussions. After all, there are many ways to do something that leads to essentially the same result.

This applies to frying chicken. I understand the question and the first paragraph. I just don’t understand why the rest of the description was important enough to add in order to ask the question. I am just trying to grasp the concept that it is okay to make the statements said without potentially causing some type of feeling of a personal attack.

I don’t, never have.

@bewailknot It just sounds gross! Like, Head Cheese, you know? I realize that it’s simply perception, and it probably is very good but…it just sounds gross! But…if you put the word “hamburger” into “cow muscle and fat” that sounds gross too! :)

Wait…this just registered…you’ve never made fried chicken @Simone_De_Beauvoir? Wow!
That reminds me of a story. When I was a single working mom I made a lot of quicky dinners…spaghetti, burritos, stuff like that. They almost never saw me in full-blown three course mode.
Well, one Sunday I decided to fry some chicken. My son, who was at 14, came up and said, “What are you doing?”
I said, “I’m frying chicken! What does it look like?!”
He said, “Oh. I thought it was an experiment.” I lollld! I figured maybe I should do a little more mommy-cooking, at least on the weekend.
I guess maybe I experiment a lot too. :)

@Dutchess_III I don’t cook and my kids don’t eat meat, really. So there’s no need for fried chicken.

My dad was from Texas and he told my mom that there were some things that he really, really liked….fried chicken was one, and cornbread and beans were another. She was from the Northwest and didn’t have a clue how to fix any of it…but she figured it out, and boy, is it good!

I love corn bread and good pinto beans. I call them soup beans. I like it when the soup is really thick and rich. What did she cook her beans with, @Dutchess_III? My mom used salt pork and cooked the beans all day really slowly until the soup was thick and the beans were tender. My husband is from Northern New York and says he doesn’t get the appeal of my soup beans.

Oh man! Yes, nice and thick and it sops up into the corn bread. So good. We buy the 5 lb bacon ends and pieces. A lot of them are good for just frying bacon for breakfast. The others are mis-cut, big chunks, whatever. That’s what I use in my beans and also in my baked beans. And a little bit of smoke sauce and onions, of course. I bought a sack of pinto beans this morning, but didn’t get home until 11 a.m. It’s far too late to start beans now. I’ll save them for next Sunday, and I’ll start them Saturday night.
Anyone want to come for dinner next Sunday?

Oh, and I also use “leftovers” in burritos. Can’t touch that, boys!