Fryin' Chicken

I had to reprogram the television remote because of its impact on kitchen appliances. It’s not that the little invisible ray that comes out the front was making the microwave incinerate things. I had to remove Food TV from the channel lineup because of the nasty impact it was having on things at home.

We’re big fans of Food TV. At first, it was things like the grilling programs, then it was the contests where guest chefs from around the world created impossibly fantastic sugar sculptures, cakes or other things entirely of food. They had to operate within a specified amount of time, usually under some adverse conditions, and then had to carry their creation over an obstacle course, or at least from the kitchen to a display table, all without it crashing to the floor.

It was more exciting than NASCAR, although the anxiety over the crashes was about the same.

The remote had to be reprogrammed because of a program by Alton Brown called “Good Eats”.

This is a great show. It takes all the stuff your Grandma taught you about cooking things and explains why it works the way it does. “Yes, things taste better if fried in hog lard. But only until the heart attack and then you’re gonna be facing a lifetime of iceberg lettuce. How about a little moderation in the meantime?”

I happened to see one show in particular twice. Alton talked about how to fry a chicken.

Not to dump it in the little deep fryer with the plastic lid that holds grease from eons of the past, like a starter on some alternate energy source for mankind, but like Grandma and Momma did, rolled in flour and in a big cast iron skillet with a crispy flavorful crust composed primarily of the skin of the poor beast.

I know, you’re not supposed to eat the skin. But this is real fried chicken, not something that the Colonel trolled in from a megavat and left under a warming light for a while.

It looked easy enough. First, he talked about the reasons for buying a whole chicken and cutting it up yourself rather than letting the grocery store do it for you. I should have changed to an infomercial about making my fortune flipping real estate right then; it would have been less expensive and time consuming.

I’d never before cut up a whole chicken. I like the little Styrofoam trays that keeps actual physical contact with that oogey yellow fat as far away from me as possible. But I decided to have a go at it, to get the “full culinary experience.” Julia Childs would have been proud. Mom would have said, “You’re crazy; that just makes a mess.” Unfortunately, I didn’t consult Mom before starting this adventure.

The first problem is finding a suitable knife. Had the movie Psycho been filmed in our house, the infamous shower scene would have had a very different outcome; Janet Leigh would not have screamed in horror when the curtain was pulled back, exposing the knife poised to slash. Instead, she would have simply said, “I told you to get the chicken already cut up; you know that thing is as dull as a hoe. Now get out, I’ll be done in a minute.”

I had two fully cleaned chickens, though (one was backup) sitting on the counter and waiting to become dinner. I had on my apron (showing that I was serious about this whole process), had selected the largest and sharpest of the utensils available and a frontiersman’s determination to reduce these things to a dinner that would have made my ancestors proud.

Instead, I ended up with a kitchen that looked like a crime scene, missing only little white chicken-shaped outlines taped around on the counters and floor. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that eventually the carcasses were hacked into chunks small enough to fit into the skillet. They were in no way identifiable as poultry, though, and had little resemblance to the parts neatly packed in the Styrofoam trays down at the Piggly Wiggly.

All this time, Alton’s program continued on the television, having been faithfully saved as a real time tutorial, should I need it, exhorting me to mind the skin, because this was the best crispy part.

The only way the skin on that chicken was going to be crispy was if I scooped it out of the sink and fried it separately. For the most part, it had ceased being the biological constraint that held these poor hens together and had been reduced to offal, cast away like those bits and pieces that the grocer had already taken care of for me.

You’re supposed to then go through this long process of soaking the chicken in buttermilk, then sprinkling it with spices, rolling it in a flour mixture, dipping it again and then a final roll in the flour. The resemblance to powdering a baby’s butt was unavoidable – it also felt like the kid was trying like the dickens to get away, as the various chunks of chicken kept sliding through or around their intended targets. The “5 second rule” for items that hit the floor was liberally interpreted on the theory that hot grease will kill most anything infectious.

By this time, I was over two hours into the project with no sign of dinner. All thought of “letting it rest” before frying was out the window. I wanted to hide the bodies, scrape up the crime scene tape and drink something strong to erase the vision from my mind.

That wasn’t going to happen, though, because, “. . . we’re not wasting good food!” This reasoning is not rational, but it is ingrained upon my DNA, having been methodically reinforced by Dad whenever I faced something I didn’t care for on my dinner plate while growing up.

I’d dutifully filled my deepest frying pan with enough oil for a Roman orgy and was heating it to the prescribed temperature, trying to figure out how to suspend that glass thermometer so that it was at least an inch from the bottom of the pan and yet an inch below the surface when there was only 1 ½ inches of oil present.

I’ve seen turkeys fried in those outdoor contraptions before. The thought of watching the oil flow across the kitchen, spreading a lake of fire was on the radar scope as not being outside the realm of possibilities given the tenor of things thus far. I paused to make sure that the fire extinguisher in the pantry was readily accessible.

After about the third time the thermometer shot off the side of the pan like a rocket ship into orbit followed by splashdown in the pool of heating oil because that silly little metal clip doesn’t fit right, I gave up and decided to wing it, so to speak.

Erring on the side of “hotter is better” because there’s little that’s more unappetizing than rare chicken, I cranked up the burner and the first piece went into the pan. I think it was something from sort of in the breast area, kind of a big piece, although that really would not have been possible to determine without forensic reconstruction.

I’ve got pretty quick reflexes, but you can’t clap a lid on poppin’ grease fast enough to stop the mess. It’s also amazing how grease can aerosolize and make it across the entire kitchen in far less time than it takes to use up an adult male’s entire vocabulary of obscene words (including those normally reserved for hanging wallpaper).

Recognizing that by now that renovating the kitchen again was going to be easier than cleaning it, the rest of the chicken went into the grease at once and I held the lid down while something that felt like a thermo-nuclear explosion happened in the pan.

It was about this time that “someone” wandered through wondering when dinner might be ready, since it was already an hour beyond our normal eatin’ time. Big guys in their late 40’s are like babies – if we don’t eat regular, we get downright cranky, and once a schedule is established, biology is not to be denied. We won’t go into the response, other than to say that a large glass of red wine soon appeared at my side, after which I was again alone amidst the carnage.

Trying to tell when the inside of the chicken is done by looking at the outside is apparently a skill lost to the ages. After burning one side like an offering to the Gods, flipping it and cooking the other side until it looked “about right”, we sat down to eat only to find the insides still cold and pasty.

There’s a reason that the Colonel has stayed in business all this time. It’s pretty good chicken, and even if you factor in the time it takes to get across town and order, it’s faster than cleaning up the kitchen. If you add in the cost of remodeling after the grease fire, it’s actually pretty economical.

And now all the food programs have been blocked from the television remote.