Southern Fried Chicken is a firm favourite with pretty much everyone. You can go to the drive in and get yourself a bucket or you can do it yourself. I thinking doing it yourself it so easy, so cheap and a real fun thing to do and if you live near a drive in you might find its actually quicker to do it at home if you have done your prep!
I like buy a whole chicken, because it's cheap, it's easy to portion and you get different shapes and sizes of portions so its just like going to the drive in! You can of course buy chicken portions, drumsticks, thighs etc but you will pay for the prep when you can just do it yourself.
To make this recipe you will also need buttermilk. This is a really good ingredient for the chicken and the longer you can leave the chicken marinading in the buttermilk the better!
Because you are making this dish yourself you can decide which herbs and spices to add to give you the flavour you want!
For my southern fried chicken i used the following.
1 Large Chicken
300ml Buttermilk
Plain Flour
Paprika
Onion Salt
Garlic Salt
Black Pepper
Dried Oregano
This is a time to experiment and add what you like or what you have handy, the idea is to create a flavour combo you are happy with. You might stumble on something that really fits and then you can make a note of it for the next time. Don't go too heavy on the spices either, just add some into the flour and mix it around, the flavour will come through when you bite into that crispy covering!
Once you have your chicken portions, whether you chopped up your chicken or got some ready made, put some flour in a bowl and add your spices, herbs, salts and pepper. Mix around and then coat each chicken portion in the flavoured flour.Place all of the chicken in a bowl and pour over the buttermilk. Mix it all around so all of the chicken is covered in the thick milk. Now ideally you will put this in the fridge for 24 hours! Yep 24 hours, however if you don't have the time or simple cannot wait then give it 30 minutes. The longer you leave it the more tender the chicken will be so do what you can!
When its time to cook make up or add to the flour you have left from the original dusting. Take each chicken portion, let any excess buttermilk drip off and then dunk the chicken into the flour. give it a good coating and place on a board ready for cooking, do each portion and make sure it has that flour mixture all over it.
You should get some thick bits of the flour on the chicken, this is exactly what you want, this will go super crispy! After dunking all of the chicken its time to fry! I went for deep frying however there is nothing wrong with shallow frying! I cook 2 pieces of chicken at a time, make sure the oil doesn't get too hot, control this by either taking the oil off the heat or add more oil. Be careful when frying making sure you watch the pan at all times. Turn the chicken when it is golden brown on one side and crisp up the other. Once nice and golden take out of the oil and put on an oven tray and place in a warm oven, 180C should be fine. This will allow the chicken to cook through and not be burnt on the outside.
Leave the chicken in the oven until it is cooked through before serving. No you can serve this with chips, spicy potatoes, salad or coleslaw. I went for spicy potatoes. I will posting my recipe for those shortly. Give this a go you won't regret it, in fact you will probably coming back for more!
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