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Fried Chicken
Clean and wash a chicken of the frying size, twice the age of a broiler; cut it up, dividing the breast into two pieces, and lay it in cold water for half an hour.
Have on the stove a frying pan with lard an inch deep in it. Season the chicken well with salt and pepper, and dredge well with flour. Drop into the boiling lard and turn frequently till it is beautifully brown. It must not cook done on one side before turning on the other, as it will not be so evenly and nicely cooked.
Maryland cooks often invert a pan over the frying chicken in order to cook it in the very best way. -Marian V. Dorsey.
A plain skillet-fried chicken from the era before pressure fryers and thermometers, with the doneness left entirely to the cook's eye. A few points bring it into a modern kitchen.
- "Twice the age of a broiler"A broiler was a young bird of a pound or two; a fryer was the next stage up and a good deal heavier. A standard supermarket chicken, cut up, is the nearest modern equivalent.
- The half hour in cold waterThis was done to draw out blood and firm the flesh. Keep the bowl in the refrigerator rather than on the counter, and dry the pieces thoroughly before flouring or the coating will slide off in the fat.
- "Boiling lard"Fat does not boil; the writer means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around the meat. Aim for 325-350F. Above that the flour burns before the thigh is cooked; below it the crust turns greasy.
- An inch of fatThat is shallow frying, not deep frying, which is why turning matters so much. A 10- to 12-inch cast-iron skillet holds the depth well and recovers heat quickly when cold chicken goes in.
- Turning frequentlyThe instruction is deliberate and worth following. Frequent turning keeps either side from setting hard while the other is still pale, and gives a more even colour than the single-flip method.
- The inverted panThe recipe offers this as something Maryland cooks "often" did. Covering the skillet traps steam and helps cook the thick joints through without scorching the crust; uncover for the last several minutes so the coating crisps again.
- DonenessColour alone is unreliable on bone-in pieces. Take breast pieces to 165F and thighs and drumsticks to 175F at the bone, where the dark meat is more tender anyway.
- YieldA bird this size will generally serve about four, and the pieces will not all fit in one skillet at once. Fry in two batches rather than crowding, and hold the first batch on a rack in a 200F oven.
Fried chicken in an inch of lard, covered part of the way through, is close to what came to be called Maryland style, and the recipe names the connection outright. In some American cookbooks of the period the Maryland version is distinguished from a plain fry by the covered pan and by a cream gravy built in the drippings afterward, a step this contributor leaves out, though the published versions vary a good deal. The recipe is credited to a named contributor, which suggests a book assembled from readers' and correspondents' recipes rather than written by a single authority. The distinction between broiler and fryer mattered to a cook who bought live or freshly killed birds and judged them by age, since an older bird benefited from the moist covered cooking that a tender broiler did not need.