Southern Cooking - Real Southern Fried Chicken

Eat your heart out, Colonel Sanders because preparing Southern Fried Chicken at home isn't hard at all. In fact, it's so simple that anyone can do it and enjoy the delicious results by following these simple steps. It's not really a recipe - just a time honored, tried and true method for cooking the best Southern Fried Chicken to come out of the American South.

I learned this method from my mother and grandmother who learned it from their elders.

The first tool you must have to prepare authentic Southern Fried Chicken is an iron spider. Yankees who don't know what an iron spider is can read that as a black cast iron skillet. A cast iron skillet is a cook's best friend. It is versatile, easy to care for, and will cook for decades. My mother, in fact, still uses her grandmother's iron spider.

Start heating that iron spider on the stove and collect these ingredients:

1 (or more depending on how many folks you want to feed) chicken, cut-up into pieces

Milk or buttermilk

Flour

Cornmeal

Salt, pepper, and any other seasonings you like (One of my personal favorites is a salt-free Cajun seasoning blend)

Shortening or lard (or oil if you must)

Soak the cut up chicken pieces in the milk or buttermilk in a large bowl. These pieces can be soaked for an hour or as long as overnight.

While the chicken is soaking, combine the the flour and cornmeal in equal ratio (example: a cup of flour, a cup of cornmeal) and add seasonings to the dry mix.

Toss about a half of cup of shortening (yes, artery clogging shortening) or lard into that skillet and let it melt.

Make sure there is at least an inch of melted shortening in the pan and heat until it is smoking hot.

Remove each piece of chicken from the milk and coat it with the flour mixture. Pick the meatier pieces like legs and thighs and breasts first.

Always put the pieces skin side down first and fry until golden brown. Then, flip the chicken and brown the other side.

You will only be able to put a few pieces at a time into the skillet. Have a prepared broiler pan (prepared by spraying with cooking spray) ready on the stove and as each piece is done, browned on both sides, remove that piece to the broiler pan with skin side up.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Once every piece of chicken you plan to fry has been browned and put on the pan, put the broiler pan (using the top rack so that grease with drip into the bottom half) into the oven for about an hour.

This allows the chicken to get even browner and to stay crisp.

For a true Southern meal, save some of those pan drippings to make cream gravy.

Serve the Southern fried chicken with mashed potatoes, cream gravy, corn on the cob or fried okra, and buttermilk biscuits. You might want to add a dish of sliced tomatoes in season too!

This is Southern y'all come back good fried chicken!