Ingredients
- 1 frying chicken, cut up
- salt
- pepper
- 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
- Peanut oil
Directions
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Wash and thoroughly dry all the chicken pieces and place them in a single layer in a pan. Liberally salt and pepper the chicken pieces on both sides. Be very generous with the pepper. The taste of pepper is very important to authentic southern fried chicken. Now, if you want to sneak in some other seasonings, this is the time to do that. Sometimes I sprinkle on some Lawry’s seasoning salt or some Jane’s Crazy Mixed-Up Salt. Whatever floats your boat. But if you’re a purist, you’ll stick with just salt and pepper.
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Sprinkle all the flour over the chicken in the pan and toss the chicken to coat it well in flour. We’re talking about “dredging” here, not lightly flouring. That’s why you pour the flour over and toss the chicken in it rather than doing that shake-it-up in the bag thing. You want a good coating of flour.
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Meanwhile, heat the peanut oil in a large iron skillet. I’m using about a 1/2 inch of oil here. What we’re doing is pan frying, not deep frying. You need enough oil to come about halfway up the pieces of chicken, but not so much that it will spill over when you place the chicken in the pan. Using a well-seasoned iron skillet makes a huge difference in the taste of your chicken. Just something about a great iron skillet that you can’t get from any other piece of kitchen equipment. Also, I recommend using peanut oil because it will withstand higher temperatures for a longer time without burning than other oils.
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A little trick to test whether the oil is hot enough to cook — Place the end of a wooden spoon in the skillet. If the oil bubbles around it, it’s hot enough.
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Place the chicken pieces, skin side down in the hot oil. Cook for approximately 10 minutes or until the skin is pale golden brown.
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Turn the chicken over and cook for 10 minutes on the second side.
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What? You say it’s burned? Hmm. Well, a couple of pieces are a little dark, I suppose. Oh, bless your heart…you thought it was going to look like Kentucky Fried Chicken, didn’t you? Let me tell you a secret. Those dark pieces will be the best tasting ones of the whole chicken. Trust me on that.
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Turn chicken pieces once more, reduce heat to medium low, cover and cook approximately 10-15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. Please excuse my improvised lid in the picture. I don’t happen to have a lid that fits my largest iron skillet, so I improvised with the largest one I did have. Works fine.
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Remove the hot chicken to a paper towel lined plate and allow to drain for about 5 minutes.