Yield: 4-6 servings

Best Deep South Southern Fried Chicken

Best Deep South Southern Fried Chicken

Ingredients

  • 1 whole large fryer, cut up into 8 pieces ( 2 each: breasts, legs, thighs and wings)
  • buttermilk, enough to cover (pick up a quart and you’ll have enough), *optional
  • 1 Tbl. Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, *optional

Flour/breading mixture:

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 tsp. dried parsley
  • 1/2 tsp. ground rosemary
  • 1/2 tsp. dried sage
  • 1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning
  • 2 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. seasoning salt, I use “Johnny’s”
  • 1/4 tsp. celery salt
  • 1 Tbl. + 1 tsp. coarse ground pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. cayenne
  • 3 Tbl. garlic powder
  • 1 1/2 Tbl. onion powder
  • 1/2 tsp. italian seasoning
  • 1 Tbl. paprika
  • 1 tsp. creole seasoning, (I use Slap Ya Mama)
  • 1/8 tsp. dry mustard

*Other items needed:

  • 2 brown paper lunch sacks
  • canola oil for frying ( 1 – 1 1/2″ deep in pan)
  • 1 Tbl. bacon grease (for extra flavor for the oil), optional
  • *2 well-beaten eggs, optional, (for double-coating)

Instructions

  • Cut up chicken into pieces, 2 each of breasts, thighs, legs and wings, and place into large bowl. Cover with buttermilk. Add hot sauce and toss to distribute. Press pieces lightly into bowl to make sure it’s all completely covered. About 3/4 of a quart is what it’ll take. Cover and refrigerate for several hours or best overnight.
  • Open one brown paper lunch sack, place the other one inside and open it, too, to have a double-lined bag. Add flour and rest of ingredients. Twist top closed and give sack a good shake to mix.
  • Drain chicken pieces and pat dry. Add one piece of chicken at a time to flour mixture, (adding largest pieces first down to smallest), shake really well to coat nicely, and place onto cooling rack placed over a baking sheet as you go along to “dry” a bit and “set”.
  • While chicken is resting and setting, heat up oil with a Tbl. of leftover bacon grease in a deep frying pan filling up to about 1 1/2″ deep. Heat until the end of a wooden spoon place into center of pan bubbles around the bottom and edges.
  • Start with the breasts and add to pan carefully making sure it sizzles nicely in the hot oil placing the breasts “pretty side-down”. Add a thigh and don’t crowd pieces! Lightly brown all pretty sides, about 5 minutes, carefully turn with tongs, place on lid and turn down heat so that chicken is cooking nicely. Fry for 20 minutes. Remove lid carefully and quickly flipping over so that no accumulated water on the lid adds to the grease. Turn heat back up to medium, turn pieces back to pretty side down, fry another 5 minutes uncovered, turn to pretty side up and fry for 5 last minutes (uncovered). *This last frying with the lid off crisps the chicken coating. Carefully remove pieces to clean cooling rack placed over a baking sheet. Fry the rest of the pieces the same way doing a second batch of the second thigh and the 2 legs. *The first batch will stay hot! (Or you can place into a warm oven after 15-20 minutes or so.) *I do my chicken in 3 batches due to the size of my pan, frying the wings last cutting the time down substantially. They only take about 15 minutes or so total.
  • *For double-coated chicken, double the flour mixture, coat once in flour mixture shaking off excess, dip pieces into 2 well-beaten eggs, then coat a second time in the flour.
  • **You can also re-coat chicken just before frying by simply shaking it in the flour a second time without dipping into egg. That also works to get a slightly thicker crust, in-between single and double-coated.

    • Notes

    *Soaking chicken in buttermilk overnight is an old trick to tenderize chicken. You don't necessarily have to do this, though. It will still be very good skipping that step.