I love fried chicken. I love making it almost as much as I love eating it. There’s something really serene about dipping pieces of chicken in flour and then tossing it into a hot pan of oil.

For this recipe, you will need the following ingredients:

• boneless chicken breast
• eggs
• flour
• bread crumbs (optional)
• vegetable shortening (or vegetable oil; shortening makes it crispier)
• salt and pepper

…and the following “fancy” equipment:

• two bowls
• frying pan
• tongs

I honestly have no idea how much chicken I fried this batch. My mom had defrosted it and had planned on doing something with it, but she had homework (she’s going for her Master’s), and didn’t know quite what to do with it, so I volunteered to fry it up.

Put your frying pan — that’s right, you don’t need a deep fryer! — on medium heat.

Slice up your chicken breast into pieces that look kind of like chicken tenders, but aren’t too thin. Trust me, it is a pain in the ass trying to fry a thick piece of chicken. You only really know it’s done when you’ve put it in your mouth… and my former Culinary instructors would throw something at me if they heard me say that.

(Side note: That’s right. I went to Culinary school. I attended a tech school for high school and my focus was Culinary Arts. I did it for four years, went through NOCTI and came out alive, graduated with Culinary Arts on my diploma… and decided to go to college for web design. See? I am all over the place… but it’s given me a lot of great experiences.)

I didn’t take too many pictures because, well, you try taking pictures with your hands coated in egg and flour!

After you’ve sliced up your chicken breasts, gently add some shortening to your frying pan.  I say “gently” because if your heat is too high, it could back-splash and you’d end up in the ER wishing you’d gotten to eat before waiting behind all of the one-year-olds with colds. If it starts to melt like ice on a sidewalk during summer, you’re good to go. Go ahead and add a little more shortening. You want to lightly coat the bottom of the pan with maybe ¼ an inch of oil.

While your shortening gets hot, set up your bowls. If you’ve ever tried to make fried chicken at home and it didn’t come out crispy or just didn’t have enough flavor, it might be because you didn’t use the two bowl method. (Yes, it has a better name. No, I don’t remember it. I learned this years ago!) Put your flour, salt, and pepper into the first bowl. I added a little breadcrumbs to mine this last time to see if it would help get the skin crispier. It did, so if you have them on hand, give it a shot. I added ¼ as many bread crumbs as I had flour in my bowl. Basically, I eyeballed it all, as usual. Mix the flour, salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs with your fingers. I used fresh ground peppercorns. They make a huge difference in any dish, but especially in fried chicken.

Next set up your wet bowl. Crack two or three eggs — depending on how much chicken you’re frying — and add more salt and pepper. Whisk with a fork until it’s got the consistency of orange juice with too much pulp. It should be that same color, too, except with little flecks of pepper in it.

I learned this two-step dipping method in high school, and it really makes a huge difference. First, decide which hand is going to be your “wet” hand, and which one will be “dry.” This is important because it’ll help you dip faster, get your hands (a little) less messy, and leave you one hand to use the tongs with.

Toss a piece of chicken into the flour bowl. Use the fingers of your “dry” hand to coat it evenly. Then, with your “dry” hand, pick it up and put it in the egg bowl. Use your “wet” hand to coat it evenly, then with your “wet” hand, toss it back into the flour bowl. Coat it in flour again evenly with your “dry” hand, then use your “dry” hand to gently put it in the frying pan. Make sure to splash away from your body, meaning put the piece of chicken down so that the back half of it falls away from you.

Repeat this process until your pan is full.

Note that I really don’t have that much oil in my pan.

This part is kind of boring. You have to keep checking the undersides of the chicken. When they are golden brown, it’s time to flip:

Repeat for the second side. While the second side is sizzling away, grab a plate, load it up with paper towels, and put it within reach. Once those pieces of chicken get close to crispy, there’s a thin line between “extra crispy” and “ew, this shit is burnt.” When you’ve got them nice and golden brown, use your tongs to remove them from the pan and put them on top of the paper towels. The paper towels will soak up the extra grease, and you can throw another paper towel on top to keep them warm if you’re still frying.

I can’t say enough how fucking delicious this was with bread crumbs. I’m going to have to experiment with different brands, though, or figure out how to adjust the flavor a little.

What’s your favorite fast food fried chicken? I love me some Bojangles’, but they’re a southern joint so I haven’t had them in years. They blow KFC out of the water. Popeyes is good, too, because of its Cajun twist, and we actually have one up here (though only at the TA, which makes sense because truckers from the south would feel more at home). Recently, this mom-and-pop drive thru opened. I can’t remember what they’re called, but if you’re in my neck of the woods, they’re on Thomaston Ave, in the same plaza with the thrift store, Wendy’s, and Dunkin Donuts.

♦

Check Out My Other Recipes

• Basic White Cake
• Pasta with Garden Sauce
• Rotelle and Broccoli Alfredo
• Leftover Smoothie