American Country Fried Chicken Recipe - Southern Styled

Country cooking in the southern United States is a bit of an art form. You won’t find many heart healthy, low cal meals here. Most of the meals are large and include fried foods (even vegetables like fried okra), mounds of mashed potatoes made with milk and butter, warm fresh bread smothered in butter and thick rich gravy made from fried food drippings and grease, flour and milk. One of the favorites in southern style cooking is southern fried chicken.

Just plain old fried chicken is easy enough to make: you just coat the chicken with salted and peppered white flout and fry it in hot oil until it is golden. That tastes pretty good if you don’t overcook it. But if you really want some good fried chicken, southern fried chicken is the way to go, and it doesn’t take that much more time or work.

If you are only frying up a couple pieces of chicken, just cut the recipe down to match the number of pieces. It’s hard to give precise amounts anyway because the size of the chicken parts makes it difficult to tell how many eggs, how much flour and how much salt and pepper to use.

Country Fried Chicken Southern Style

• 1 whole cut up chicken (about 3 pounds)
• 3 to 4 eggs, well beaten
• 3 cups of flour
• 4 to 5 tablespoons of salt
• 3 tablespoons of coarsely ground pepper (add more if you like pepper)
• 4 cups or so of frying oil (vegetable or peanut)

Put the eggs in a bowl big enough to easily hold the largest piece of chicken. You can start with 3 and add another if you need it.

In large bowl or a large plastic bag mix the flour, salt and pepper. There should be enough pepper in the flour that you can see specks of it fairly close together.

Make sure you have rinsed the chicken in cold water before you start putting the coating on.

The first step is to take a piece of chicken and coat it well with flour. Then, coat it with the beaten eggs, and then add another coating of the flour mixture. This double coating gives a nice thick, crispy coating to the chicken after it is fried.

Put the chicken on a rack and let it sit for about 15 minutes before frying. This will help to keep the coating on the chicken while it is frying and being eaten.

While the chicken is waiting on the rack, heat the oil up in a large, heavy frying pan. You don’t want it so hot that it smokes, but you want it pretty hot. Make it hot enough that you can’t hold your hand close to it very long and it sizzles when you put a few drops of water in it.

Add the chicken to the oil and try not to crowd the pieces too close together. Fry it uncovered until the bottom side is golden brown (don’t get it too done). Turn it with tongs and cook until the other side is golden. Remove it to a large platter with a paper towel on it to soak up the grease.

Enjoy this delicious fried chicken with a big pile of mashed potatoes, some biscuits and an ear of boiled corn. Hail to the south!