Fried chicken, edited

June 8, 2020

Like everyone else, COVID-19 means I am spending more time in the kitchen, experimenting, trying to make new things and relying on my arsenal of practiced ways to create new dishes. My style in the kitchen owes a lot to my Uncle Russ.

I inherited my love of food and cooking from my Uncle Russell, who was a chef. Cooked for the Queen herself once, he did. My cousin Lindsay is a chef. Until I was 30, I spent a lot of time working in restaurants and bars, in the kitchen, at the bar, waiting tables, bouncing. You learn a few things along the way, it turns out. I worked a bit with my Uncle Russ. He was a hard man to be in a kitchen with, but we talked a lot about how to make food, what went into food. From him, I learned how to make food in a manner that was less technical than it was a feeling, a sense of what would go together, how it would cook or bake, which spices worked with what and most importantly, what flavours would work with other flavours.

Experimentation is central to this kind of approach to food. Russ had learned how to cook when he ran away from home when he was 16 and joined the Royal Canadian Navy, where he was assigned to the kitchen. I always presumed this was punishment, as I could never quite square my free-living, fun-loving, gregarious uncle who refused to take orders from or listen to anyone with the idea of the daily discipline and work of the kitchen.

He learned how to cook using what was at hand, to make food to feed the crew, and to be creative in so doing. After he left the navy, he worked for a while in the merchant marines on the Great Lakes and up St. Lawrence to Montréal and sharpened his skills. When I was a teenager, Russ owned a bistro in Toronto, in the Danforth, called Browne’s (his last name). I remember the first time I visited; I was 17 and in Toronto from Vancouver. To my suburban eyes, it was wicked cool, battered hard wood floors, mismatched chairs at the tables, a big massive wooden bar, an open kitchen. My grandfather, Rod, grumbled that Russ spent too much time drinking with his regulars. And drink Russ did; it’s what killed him in the end. I spent some time with him at Browne’s during this era and that’s when he taught me how to cook for real.

As I said, Russ was not an easy man to deal with in the kitchen. Short but big-bodied, he had a physical presence you couldn’t ignore. And a temper. In short, he was a chef. I was his favourite nephew, and a lot like him, minus the heavy drinking --- and we had fun together in the kitchen. It is where I started to love cooking. And I learned from Russ that whilst you can make something seriously gourmet, you can also make something very basic turn out amazing and mouth-watering. His specialty was the patty melt. Like Russ, I can cook both very fancy food and I can make fancy versions of very basic food.

And, like my favourite uncle, I am from everywhere and nowhere, a nomad, a wanderer, and an immigrant. I live in the United States in the midst of a pandemic where the president seems to think it is immigrants’ fault that this plague is upon us. Unlike the American president, I have seen a lot of the world. I have lived in two countries and on both the Atlantic and Pacific shores. I have lived on the mighty St. Lawrence and on the chaotic Ottawa rivers. I have lived on the shores of the Tennessee River, in the estuary of the Fraser River, and on the wide and broad Connecticut. I have lived up in the Appalachian hills of Western Massacusetts on the northern end of the range and in Southern Tennessee where they meet the foothills in Georgia. I have the geographic coordinates of my hometown, Montréal, tattooed on my forearm. But when you are an Anglo Montrealer, you are never really fully of and from that place, and you learn about alienation from place and home at a young age. And so I did.

In Montréal, a decade ago, there was this simulated roadhouse, the Ice House, on rue Roy, just off Blvd Saint-Laurent. They had amazing fried chicken tacos. Russ would have liked them. He would have liked the idea of sticking some fried chicken in a taco. Then we moved away and we didn’t live in Montréal anymore and we couldn’t go there. I was determined to recreate them at home.

And so began my quest to figure out how to make the perfect fried chicken. Fried chicken is, in many ways, fitting for me. It is originally a Southern food, but it is now just as nomadic as I am. My original association is with Montréal, but I really figured out how to make it living in Alabama and Tennessee, and I’ve brought it back to New England with me. I put this fried chicken on tacos, but I also make fried chicken sandwiches, chasing the perfect sandwich we once had while visiting Portland, Oregon. This fried chicken is an homage to my uncle, a result of experimentation, a meal as ubiquitous as COVID-19 in America and as singular as the cultures and people around the world who make and enjoy it.

Like my Uncle Russ, I don’t really work from recipes. I sometimes look at them, sometimes I sort of follow them, sometimes I just acknowledge they exist. When I first made fried chicken, I started with recipes and then began to experiment. And now, after a decade of making fried chicken, I have hit on a winner.

Frying chicken is really easy to start with. You need chicken breasts, flour, egg wash and a pot full of hot oil. But making delicious, juicy, spicy fried chicken (not quite Nashville Hot Chicken, mind you), well, that is more complicated. I have spent years experimenting with this and along the way I have learned a few things. For starters, you cannot use chicken that has ever been frozen, it has too much water in it. That leads to bad things happening. You have to have a sweet spot with your oil. It can’t be brand new, as the flavour is just not quite right. You have to carefully judge the time it takes to cook the chicken and you have to pull it out of the oil at that exact moment. If you don’t cook it long enough, it’s not crispy enough, if you over cook it, it’s just nasty. It is not as simple as picking it out of the oil when it floats, either, which is the general rule of thumb for frying food.

This is what you need to fry chicken:

• Chicken breasts

• Flour

• Eggs, beaten, in a bowl

• Spices

• Pepper

• Vegetable oil, whatever kind, I use canola usually (do NOT use olive oil)

• A pot: I usually use one big enough that my oil will NEVER spill over the side or spit into the air.

• Tongs

Preparation

I usually start by making the batter, which is composed of flour, pepper, and spices. How much flour depends on how much chicken you are frying. But, if you’re doing two breasts, you’ll need at least three-four cups of flour. If you are making more, well, then you need more flour. Then, pepper. I use a grinder, and I grind in pepper until there is an abstract pattern of pepper in my flour. Then the spices. Depends on what kind of heat you want, but I tend to use fresh jalapeños, diced and then diced some more. For two breasts, I use a full jalapeño. I dice it to the point where the chunks are less than a millimetre. I drop that into the flour and pepper, and then whatever else I grab: pepper flakes (these are kind of essential), cayenne, chilis, dried peppers. You can also drop some curry in there, which totally changes the flavour and texture of the chicken, depending on what you want. Cumin also works, in small doses. I prefer pepper flakes and cayenne, personally. Mix all of this up.

The next question is what you are making the chicken for? I don’t like dark meat, so I don’t bother with legs and wings and things. I fry chicken breasts. If you like dark meat, have at it. But, then the question is how is the chicken to be eaten? I originally, of course, started off trying to make the perfect fried chicken taco. But I also love a good fried chicken burger. There is also the question of the size of the breast. If it is too thick, you may want to flay it or cut it in two. If you are making tacos or something like that, you’ll want to slice your raw chicken up before you fry it.

I like to start with a full bottle of oil, which I pour into that oversized pot. I use an oversized one because the last thing you want is oil getting everywhere. Oil plus electric elements on your stove = fire. Oil plus the gas flame on your stove = fire. These are not good things. You also don’t want to be splashed by it when you drop the chicken in or as you’re handling the chicken with your tongs. So, bigger pot. The one I am using these days is 6 quarts. I have a gas stove, and I usually turn the heat to 5 and let the heat do its thing with the oil.

Meanwhile, my chicken is out of the package, I have a cutting board I use specifically for raw meats, which I then use boiling water, soap, and lemon to sanitize afterwards. So while my chicken is sitting on that, the packaging goes in the garbage. You don’t really want to get raw chicken on you in any way, shape, or form, and if you do, hot water and soap, and wash your hands like it’s COVID-19.

Next to the chicken is the egg bath, and then the flour, and then a plate or something for the breaded chicken before I drop it into the pot. I usually use tongs for this part, lifting the chicken off the cutting board and into the egg wash and then into the flour. I roll it around some, though I tend to use my hands at this point to get the breasts completely saturated and thickly coated. The thicker the coating, the better your crispy chicken will be. Repeat.

Use your tongs to carefully drop your chicken into the oil. You do not want to splash yourself, plus dealing with oil on your clothes is a pain in the arse. Cooking an average size chicken breast can take 10-12 minutes. It’s not simply a matter of waiting for it to float. You want it to darken in colour. It should be golden brown just before you pull it out. It is worth letting it drain for a bit, too. I usually place it on paper towels on an oven rack.

And presto blammo, you’ve made fried chicken.

Matthew Barlow is an historian and writer who swears by improvisational cooking everything.