Graubart - Chicken

Possibly no other region of the country knows more chicken recipes than the South.

John Martin Taylor, The New Southern Cook

One of my earliest memories of chicken is five-year-old me standing outside a white clapboard house in a long line of people waiting to get inside. The heat was oppressive, and I wiggled my sweaty little hand out of my mothers grasp. No one seemed to mind standing in line, and I suppose I didnt either (except for the hand-holding part). The fried chicken served at Beach Road Chicken Dinners on Atlantic Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, was worth the wait. All the chicken dinners came with mashed potatoes and creamed peas, and that was the extent of the menu. (I cannot attest to how the peas tasted. It was the only table at which I ever sat for dinner that I was permitted to omit the peas from my plate.) The mashed potatoes were fluffy and gloriously buttery, but I was still allowed to put more pats of butter on top. The chicken arrived so hot that I was the last one at the table who could bite into it. My mom would reach over and lift a little piece of skin, letting the steam escape so maybe I wouldnt have to wait too long. It seems like it was always hot weather when we went to eat there, and, in hindsight, I now suppose that my grandmother, who made wonderful fried chicken herself, had declared it too hot to fry in her own kitchen (no air-conditioning), so we went and ate the second best.

Both grandmothers were good cooks but completely different kinds. Nana, who lived in Jacksonville, had a repertoire of salad- and luncheon-type dishes she produced for her bridge club. Nana Stuffie (short for short stuff) was a born country cookshe hailed from Hastings, Floridawho grew up wringing chicken necks. And, boy, she could fry chicken! Im sorry I didnt get her recipes. Im sorry I never had the chance to spend much time in the kitchen with either one of them. My mother was the queen of can-of-soup casseroles in every suburb we ever lived in, and I didnt want to inherit that crown. Ive always said I learned to cook in self-defense.

My college days encouraged my own exploration of new foods and tastes, and not long after graduating, I was producing Nathalie Duprees nationally syndicated PBS cooking show New Southern Cooking. I had no idea there was such a thing as cooking techniquenor that it could be learned. I had always been a good student, and now I saw I could save myself from my unfortunate culinary childhood.

Born in Florida to southern parents and grandparents, Ive eaten chicken through my southern lens in the Middle East, South Africa, all over Europe, and in most of these United States. Superior recipes come from every corner of the world, but the ones from your own family or community are the most cherished.

As children, my sister and I couldnt wait for the wishbone to dry on the kitchen windowsill after a meal of whole roast chicken. We believed in the folk wisdom that said that if two people make a wish and pull on opposite ends of the wishbone until it breaks, the wish of the person with the longer end will come true. The pony never arrived, in case you are curious.

I remember when I was twelve years old languishing for three weeks with a horrific bout of the flu, which seemed to last three months in my young mind, and finally having an appetite after an eternity of clear liquids. My mother roasted a chicken sprinkled with a bit of Lawrys seasoned salt (ubiquitous at the time) and served the golden bird with tender green beans and creamy whipped potatoes, both lavished with butter. I still remember the miracle of my reawakened taste buds and appetite that night, and the knowing reassurance that I would indeed live. That menu still reigns supreme as my comfort-food meal of choice.

Chicken is among the most iconic foods in the South, and our connections to it run deep. True southern fried chicken is the chicken dish many dream of long after theyve left the South. Sunday dinner here has always been a special meal, and if the preacher was coming, there would surely be chicken on the menu, demonstrating the familys largess in serving a precious dish. Prior to the 1940s, chicken was more expensive than beef or pork. Families with chickens in the yard were reluctant to kill their egg-laying hens, though by the time those hens finished their usefulness as layers, they were tough old birds, fit only for stew.

In the postWorld War II South, chicken farming became industrialized, lowering the price, and you could buy chicken nearly everywhere. The poultry industry hit the jackpot when high cholesterol was linked with heart disease. Red meat consumption dropped, and chicken, which is low in cholesterol, was declared a healthier protein. As the popularity of chicken grew, it became a staple for family meals. As distribution widened, there seemed to be a chicken in every pot.

In what began as a servistation in 1930 in Corbin, Kentucky, Colonel Harland Sanders built a motel and restaurant on his gas station property and turned the fried chicken from his restaurant into a franchise known the world over. He invented the process of frying his chicken in large pressure cookers and controlled his secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices by packaging and selling the seasoning mixture to Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees, never parting with the recipe. The colonel helped to make fried chicken a national dish.