Post by Glen Carman aka Delmonico on Apr 11, 2019 22:00:15 GMT -6
Fried Chicken
I have not been at a large picnic for many years, but any of us older people will remember in our younger days, at least at a large pot luck type picnic in the late spring or early summer one of the most common main dishes brought was fried chicken and I mean at a large picnic there would be lots of it, seems like half the women would bring their own version of it and some platters of it would be gone faster than others due to that version being a crowd favorite.
There are some reasons this dish is so popular at picnics, one big one is of course, most people like cold fried chicken, it’s not uncommon today to see someone with cold fried chicken in a brown bag lunch although it is often bought from some fast food fried chicken place. Fried chicken in the days before Tupperware and plastic wrap is also easy to cover and transport.
However there is a deeper reason for it being a popular dish at picnics in the time period and it goes back to they way people lived and supplied themselves with food. A lot of people raised chickens for both meat and eggs and not just people on farms, people in towns also raised chickens in many cases. This was in the days before large hatcheries that sold chicks that were presexed, meaning when the chicks come, they are hens only for egg production.
At this time people raised their own chicks from the hens and rooster they owned. When egg production started in the spring again, some of the eggs were allowed to be brooded and hatch. This meant that the spring crop of chicks would be about 50% male and useless for egg production. With forage available for the chickens in the spring it cost nothing to let them grow and the early spring cockerels would be large enough by late spring and early summer to make good fryers and still young enough to be tender. This helped with the fresh meat supply in the days before freezer and could be made into a handy, easy to transport food that was popular.
With that bit of history aside we need to get down to how to make good fried chicken, the ways to make this dish are many, most who make this dish have a favorite method but they pretty much can be broken down into two different forms, either deep fried or pan fried and either dusted in seasoned flour or battered and fried.
Deep fried was not a common way to make it, lard being to precious to use as such for most people and harder to control the heat using either a wood stove or an outdoor fire, making it a bit on the dangerous side. So for this story we’ll stick with pan fried.
Before we start frying our chickens we have a few other items to take care of, first of all we need one or more chickens to fry. If we keep to the true theme of this story, then just go out to the chicken yard and catch one or more of these young cockerels and cut off their heads and let them run around till the nerve reaction quits and they bleed out. (My cousins and I used to play tag with them when we were 4-5 years old at Grandma’s when she still raised chickens.) While they are bleeding out get your pot of boiling water ready and then grab the bird by the legs and dip it in and start picking. When the bird it picked, use a fire source to burn off the pin feathers, a piece of paper rolled up and light, works well for this.
After this one needs to remove the internal organs, cut it open with a knife below the breast between the legs and remove all the internal organs saving the heart liver and gizzard. Also up below the neck remove the crop and discard. Cut the gizzard open, remove the grit and ground up feed and remove the tough inner lining. Rinse all edible parts and cut up at the joints, spitting the breast makes most pieces about equal in size.
OK, perhaps a little more period than most wants to do and some people even in the time might not have chickens in the yard. So perhaps its best you visit you local butcher and buy an already dead, plucked and dressed chicken, buy it cut up already if you want. I do because e transporting live chickens would be a pain and many places as well as visitors would not be OK with doing as above, I often buy my chicken whole and cut it up on site as part of my demonstration.
So one way or other we have cut up chicken ready to fry we need to coat the pieces with something before frying, there are two different types of coatings, these being the batter types and just coating it with seasoned flour. I prefer the dredging it in seasoned flour and is how I will explain today, the recipes for batter are very numerous, I like a thinner coating and most period recipes I have seen call for this method.
I like my chicken very simple, seasoned with salt and pepper, perhaps that is because it was the way both of my Grandma’s did it. For your own version feel free to add any other spices/herbs desired. This method is very simple all that is needed is to dredge the chicken in the flour that the seasonings have been added to. The excess can be used to make gravy after the chicken is fried, if we are making the chicken for a picnic or other event, the gray and some biscuits or bread will make us a nice breakfast and require little prep.
For frying chicken I prefer the deep cast iron skillets with a tight fitting lid, the type that are actually often called chicken fryers. I have two of them one being the one my Grandma Carman got as a wedding present in 1922, it has fried a lot of chicken over the years as well as making many other foods, it sits on my stovetop most of the time and gets almost daily use. A camp dutch oven will also work well in this role in a camp situation.
For pan frying use enough lard to have about 3/8th to a ½ inch in the bottom of our skillet when melted. This is heated up till a drop of water immediately turns to steam, this will be around 375F. The chicken is then added and browned, turned and browned till the pieces are all nice and brown on all sides. For young chickens such as our late spring cockerels or a modern store bought chicken labeled as a fryer just lower the heat, turning from time to time till the juices run clear. (Internal temperature will be 165 if checking with a thermometer.) This will produce a fairly tender fried chicken.
For older birds such as late summer or fall ones from our flock or the modern store type labeled as roasters or stewing hens, there is a better method of producing tender fried chicken. This is where our tight fitting lid comes into play. Once the chicken is browned on all sides, turn down the heat then add around a ½ to 3/4th cup of water to the pan. (Do carefully to avoid splatter, but the heat should have lowered from our 375F that produces instant steam.) Put the lid on tight and steam/simmer for 10-15 minutes, then remove the lid, turn up the heat and boil off all the water, leaving you with just the lard and rebrown, making sure the juices run clear.
This method works well with the dredged type coating but a batter type tends to get soft and fall off. Besides being a method of using up any older chickens you have, the older chickens have a better flavor from being more mature and have a better bone to meat ratio as well as producing larger pieces.
When the chicken is done, drain any excess grease off of it, put it in a dishpan and cover with a towel, it is now ready to transport to our period picnic or other potluck type gathering.
I have not been at a large picnic for many years, but any of us older people will remember in our younger days, at least at a large pot luck type picnic in the late spring or early summer one of the most common main dishes brought was fried chicken and I mean at a large picnic there would be lots of it, seems like half the women would bring their own version of it and some platters of it would be gone faster than others due to that version being a crowd favorite.
There are some reasons this dish is so popular at picnics, one big one is of course, most people like cold fried chicken, it’s not uncommon today to see someone with cold fried chicken in a brown bag lunch although it is often bought from some fast food fried chicken place. Fried chicken in the days before Tupperware and plastic wrap is also easy to cover and transport.
However there is a deeper reason for it being a popular dish at picnics in the time period and it goes back to they way people lived and supplied themselves with food. A lot of people raised chickens for both meat and eggs and not just people on farms, people in towns also raised chickens in many cases. This was in the days before large hatcheries that sold chicks that were presexed, meaning when the chicks come, they are hens only for egg production.
At this time people raised their own chicks from the hens and rooster they owned. When egg production started in the spring again, some of the eggs were allowed to be brooded and hatch. This meant that the spring crop of chicks would be about 50% male and useless for egg production. With forage available for the chickens in the spring it cost nothing to let them grow and the early spring cockerels would be large enough by late spring and early summer to make good fryers and still young enough to be tender. This helped with the fresh meat supply in the days before freezer and could be made into a handy, easy to transport food that was popular.
With that bit of history aside we need to get down to how to make good fried chicken, the ways to make this dish are many, most who make this dish have a favorite method but they pretty much can be broken down into two different forms, either deep fried or pan fried and either dusted in seasoned flour or battered and fried.
Deep fried was not a common way to make it, lard being to precious to use as such for most people and harder to control the heat using either a wood stove or an outdoor fire, making it a bit on the dangerous side. So for this story we’ll stick with pan fried.
Before we start frying our chickens we have a few other items to take care of, first of all we need one or more chickens to fry. If we keep to the true theme of this story, then just go out to the chicken yard and catch one or more of these young cockerels and cut off their heads and let them run around till the nerve reaction quits and they bleed out. (My cousins and I used to play tag with them when we were 4-5 years old at Grandma’s when she still raised chickens.) While they are bleeding out get your pot of boiling water ready and then grab the bird by the legs and dip it in and start picking. When the bird it picked, use a fire source to burn off the pin feathers, a piece of paper rolled up and light, works well for this.
After this one needs to remove the internal organs, cut it open with a knife below the breast between the legs and remove all the internal organs saving the heart liver and gizzard. Also up below the neck remove the crop and discard. Cut the gizzard open, remove the grit and ground up feed and remove the tough inner lining. Rinse all edible parts and cut up at the joints, spitting the breast makes most pieces about equal in size.
OK, perhaps a little more period than most wants to do and some people even in the time might not have chickens in the yard. So perhaps its best you visit you local butcher and buy an already dead, plucked and dressed chicken, buy it cut up already if you want. I do because e transporting live chickens would be a pain and many places as well as visitors would not be OK with doing as above, I often buy my chicken whole and cut it up on site as part of my demonstration.
So one way or other we have cut up chicken ready to fry we need to coat the pieces with something before frying, there are two different types of coatings, these being the batter types and just coating it with seasoned flour. I prefer the dredging it in seasoned flour and is how I will explain today, the recipes for batter are very numerous, I like a thinner coating and most period recipes I have seen call for this method.
I like my chicken very simple, seasoned with salt and pepper, perhaps that is because it was the way both of my Grandma’s did it. For your own version feel free to add any other spices/herbs desired. This method is very simple all that is needed is to dredge the chicken in the flour that the seasonings have been added to. The excess can be used to make gravy after the chicken is fried, if we are making the chicken for a picnic or other event, the gray and some biscuits or bread will make us a nice breakfast and require little prep.
For frying chicken I prefer the deep cast iron skillets with a tight fitting lid, the type that are actually often called chicken fryers. I have two of them one being the one my Grandma Carman got as a wedding present in 1922, it has fried a lot of chicken over the years as well as making many other foods, it sits on my stovetop most of the time and gets almost daily use. A camp dutch oven will also work well in this role in a camp situation.
For pan frying use enough lard to have about 3/8th to a ½ inch in the bottom of our skillet when melted. This is heated up till a drop of water immediately turns to steam, this will be around 375F. The chicken is then added and browned, turned and browned till the pieces are all nice and brown on all sides. For young chickens such as our late spring cockerels or a modern store bought chicken labeled as a fryer just lower the heat, turning from time to time till the juices run clear. (Internal temperature will be 165 if checking with a thermometer.) This will produce a fairly tender fried chicken.
For older birds such as late summer or fall ones from our flock or the modern store type labeled as roasters or stewing hens, there is a better method of producing tender fried chicken. This is where our tight fitting lid comes into play. Once the chicken is browned on all sides, turn down the heat then add around a ½ to 3/4th cup of water to the pan. (Do carefully to avoid splatter, but the heat should have lowered from our 375F that produces instant steam.) Put the lid on tight and steam/simmer for 10-15 minutes, then remove the lid, turn up the heat and boil off all the water, leaving you with just the lard and rebrown, making sure the juices run clear.
This method works well with the dredged type coating but a batter type tends to get soft and fall off. Besides being a method of using up any older chickens you have, the older chickens have a better flavor from being more mature and have a better bone to meat ratio as well as producing larger pieces.
When the chicken is done, drain any excess grease off of it, put it in a dishpan and cover with a towel, it is now ready to transport to our period picnic or other potluck type gathering.