Easy Fried Chicken

Holy shit, a food post!

No pictures were taken during the making of this meal because as a clumsy person, I felt it wise not to hover over a cast iron skillet full of scalding hot oil, with a digital camera, whilst several flour-coated chicken pieces sizzled, snapped, popped and fried away. But, I have several leftover drumsticks with gorgeous crispy crusts and will take a photo and add it to this post later on this evening.

I had a huge craving for nasty fried chicken from KFC or better, Church's Chicken on Saturday so yesterday I bought a pack of 12 drumsticks as a little shout out to my 10 year old self who loved nothing more than a drumstick in each hand, even though it made eating my pasta a little difficult.

I got to frying around 7pm, after which I transferred the fried pieces onto a cast iron griddle pan and popped then in the oven to complete the cooking process. During the time they were in the oven, Todd came down with what had plagued me earlier in the week, which rendered him completely incapable of eating, which is why I have so many goddamn leftover pieces. But I digress. On to the recipe!

Easy Fried Chicken
serves 1 - ?!?!

Several chicken pieces, however many you want
1 cup buttermilk (if you do not have buttermilk, add 1 tbsp white vinegar to 1 cup milk, wait 5 minutes, then proceed)
2 cups flour
2 tbsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup vegetable oil


Set oven to 400. Skin your chicken, if you so desire (I did; I wanted fried chicken but was willing to do whatever I could to lessen the calorie bomb) Put flour and spices together in a ziplock bag and set aside. Pour buttermilk into a bowl. You are ready!

Dip chicken pieces in buttermilk and then, about three pieces at a time, put into the bag of flour, zip it closed and shake, shake, shake, senora.

Then put the flour-coated chicken pieces on a cookie sheet. Do not start frying until the flour has turned paste-like on the chicken. This is apparently a very important step! I used this time to heat up my oil in a cast iron skillet; if you don't have one, choose the largest skillet you have with as high a lip as possible.

Once the flour looks like it's sort of soaked into the chicken, drop those bad boys into the oil. Don't overcrowd though; it lowers the heat of the oil which could produce soggy chicken, not crispy which is what we want. Unless you are insane. It's best to fry them up in batches.

Flip the pieces and once they look nice and golden brown, remove and place on either a broiler rack, a wire rack or, like I did, use a cast iron griddle pan (it has the raised slat thingies that provides some space for the oil/fat to drip off).

Once all the batches are fried, turn off the heat to your oil and pop the chicken into the oven for approximately 20 - 30 minutes. I did mine closer to 20 because they were all drumsticks and I didn't have any bigger pieces.

Remove from oven and set aside to cool. Once they're cool enough to tear into like a wild animal, well, do it. Neither harbor nor express any feelings of guilt or remorse as you devour not one or two peices, but three. Three amazing morsels of fried, but not altogether super-badly fried, chicken.

DELICIOUS.