{"id":151928,"date":"2012-06-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gracious-khorana.45-76-20-142.plesk.page\/buttermilk-brined-fried-chicken\/"},"modified":"2023-06-30T15:22:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T15:22:49","slug":"buttermilk-brined-fried-chicken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/localmilkblog.com\/2012\/06\/buttermilk-brined-fried-chicken.html","title":{"rendered":"Buttermilk Brined Fried Chicken"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"Buttermilk<\/a><\/div>\n
Hoe Hop Valley Farm\u2019s Chicken brined & battered in Cruze Farm\u2019s buttermilk<\/i><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
In the south, fried chicken is like religion, and like religion everyone believes that their way is The One True Way. When Patrick requested it for his birthday I felt a twinge of terror. I\u2019d never fried chicken before. I\u2019d never deep fried anything before. So I did research, a lot of research. I read about fried chicken for days. And it seems I\u2019m no different than everyone else because I have emerged from my chicken meditations, and I\u2019m here to tell you that I have found the One True Fried Chicken. May it keep us always.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Speaking of chicken and religion,\u00a0when my mother called to ask how the party went, she told me she actually prayed for my fried chicken to turn out well. Well, evidently the God of Chicken & Biscuits (a very prominent\u00a0deity\u00a0in this part of the country) heard her, because this is momma slappin\u2019 chicken. That is to say it\u2019s chicken that \u201ctastes so good, it makes you wanna slap yo momma\u201d. I give you Urban Dictionary\u2019s break down for your edification:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

1. Tastes so good, it makes you wanna slap yo momma\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

When you try some new food that tastes so delicious it makes you wonder \u201cwhy can\u2019t my mom cook this well?\u201d. This thought makes you so angry that you feel like slapping your mom for feeding you mediocre food\u2026<\/p>\n

Kid 1: Yo dawg, I\u2019m tired of eatin\u2019 at home. My momma feeds me the same ol\u2019 grilled cheese sandwich for lunch every-damn-day.\u00a0<\/i>
Kid 2: Don\u2019t sweat it home slice. Why don\u2019t you come on over to ma crib after school? I\u2019ll make you to best PB & J sandwich you\u2019ve eva tasted. Tastes so good, make you wanna slap yo momma!\u00a0<\/i>
Kid 1: Yeaaah boii!! <\/i>
<\/i><\/p>\n

Uh-huh. That good. The thing is, I thought I could never achieve my ideal fried chicken, and I\u2019ve had a very particular ideal for a long time: Lamar\u2019s fried chicken. Lamar\u2019s Bar & Restaurant<\/a>, with a seedy pay by the hour motel in the back, is Chattanooga\u2019s (perhaps self-proclaimed) \u201cfavorite place after dark\u201d and a veritable temple of soul. You enter Lamar\u2019s up a flight of stairs beneath a striped awning, walk through the front room with its (usually unoccupied) booths down a darkened hallway lit by the green glow of a 50 gallon fish tank and into the \u201cChrystal Lounge\u201d. You\u2019ll usually find Gerald behind the bar in a tux, mixing drinks and polishing glasses. Curt, efficient, and skilled, he mixes the best (and stiffest) drinks in town. The lounge is\u00a0dimly\u00a0lit by flickering candles & colored Christmas lights and is shrouded in velvet wallpaper. The purist jukebox in the corner contains nothing but jazz, blues, soul, and R&B. This is a place that exists outside of space-time, untouched by the cheap, aseptic commercialization that has mostly wiped out the fine tradition of the dive bar. And when you go, there is no point in ordering anything other than the fried chicken which is served up late into the night.<\/div>\n

Always piping hot, succulent, and intensely flavorful (the meat as well as the breading), theirs is the only fried chicken in the world I\u2019ve ever really cared for.\u00a0I can honestly say I\u2019ve\u00a0never<\/i>\u00a0had fried chicken that was as juicy, tender, and well seasoned. And I lived a block from the famous Dunbar\u2019s in New Orleans. And I\u2019ve had fried chicken at Ad Hoc. Don\u2019t get me wrong Dunbar\u2019s was fantastic, and Ad Hoc\u2019s fried chicken was delicious. The evening I ate at Ad Hoc I even saw the man himself, Chef Thomas Keller, walk through the dining room in a Giant\u2019s baseball cap. I felt like a teenage girl in the 70\u2019s catching a glimpse of David Cassidy. But still, neither experience lived up to Lamar\u2019s. Maybe, I worried, Lamar\u2019s fried chicken can\u2019t exist outside the Chrystal Lounge. Maybe jazz, velvet wall paper, Christmas lights, and life ruining white Russians are essential ingredients in their fried chicken. Maybe you have to be young, drunk, and in the dark for fried chicken to taste that good. And if Dunbar\u2019s & Keller couldn\u2019t satisfy me, how could I ever hope to?<\/p>\n

\"Buttermilk<\/a><\/p>\n

Yeaaah boii!!<\/i><\/div>\n

Well it turns out, thank the God of Chicken & Biscuits, that I could. I\u2019m not claiming this is a replica of their chicken, only that I like it just as much.\u00a0I knew for sure I was going to brine my chicken. But I also knew I wanted the chicken to sit in a \u201cbuttermilk bath\u201d. So why not just create a buttermilk brine, I wondered? Most recipes I read used one or the other. Well, at first I feared that the dual action of the acid, enzymes, and calcium in the buttermilk along with the tenderizing effects of salt penetrating the meat via osmosis would render my meat mushy. So I kept reading.<\/p>\n

It seemed that, while less common than you would think, people do brine their chicken in buttermilk and it doesn\u2019t make it mushy. So, I was set. I consulted Keller\u2019s recipe<\/a> and created a brine using his approximate ratios for liquid, salt, and honey with my own flavorings, and after reading his recipe along with countless others I decided I would also \u201cdredge, dip, dredge\u201d in flour and buttermilk prior to deep frying at around 325\u00b0\u00a0F in an enameled cast iron dutch oven. I\u2019d also read that baking powder and cornstarch in your dredging flour led to an extra crispy coating, and that nutmeg was cited as a \u201csecret ingredient\u201d. I love nutmeg, so I was sold on that idea, and I decided to use unbleached all-purpose flour plus a teaspoon of baking powder and a tablespoon of cornstarch per cup as my dredging base. Lastly, I\u2019d read in The Pioneer Woman\u2019<\/a>s recipe and in others that mixing the final dredging flour with a bit of buttermilk till \u201cshaggy\u201d led to a nice coating on the chicken. \u00a0I found this naturally occurred in the second dredging dish as I dredge, dipped in buttermilk, and dredged again. I think when doing so much chicken (I did a double recipe) it would have gotten too clumpy if I\u2019d added buttermilk beforehand. I might add a tablespoon or two if I were doing less.<\/p>\n

Because I was cooking a double recipe for a group and also due to the fact that I had rather large chickens that I\u2019d gotten from Hoe Hop Valley Farm at the Main Street market, I knew I wanted to hold and\/or finish my chicken in the oven. I was worried this would result in a soggy exterior. It did not. I will say that detail is not<\/i>\u00a0my ideal. Ideally the chicken would be cooked through in the oil, rest on a rack over paper towels for about ten minutes and be served immediately thereafter. But on this point I had to compromise. Michael Ruhlman<\/a> said it was okay, so obviously it\u2019s okay. The Pioneer Woman, Ree, also says it\u2019s okay. The benefit of finishing in the oven is that you can pull your chicken out of the oil at its golden peak and then finish it without having to worry about overcooking the exterior or undercooking the interior. Also, there\u2019s the obvious benefit of being able to serve it when you want and keep 16 pieces of fried chicken hot.\u00a0So, conceptually I had in my head the blueprints for perfect buttermilk brined fried chicken for a crowd. But as you know, cooking is something learned by doing and all the reading in the world can\u2019t\u00a0guarantee a successful result. You just have to do it and use your intuition & five senses along the way.<\/p>\n

When I wrote about my first layer cake experiment, I mentioned that I, up until this year, had a pension for celebrating birthdays with \u201cdeath knells and banshee wails\u201d not things like cake baking & dinner parties. That wasn\u2019t to imply that birthdays bothered me, that aging was some terrible fate that I lamented. I was feeling far too youthfully immortal to concern myself with the inevitable march of time. Instead it was to say that my particular brand of celebration was a brutally wild sort. Now things are different, more civilized. It\u2019s a novel, calm reality that has settled on me softly this past year like waking up in your own bed after a terrifying dream. In contrast to years past, we celebrated his 26th with a small dinner party of his closest friends replete with tea lights in mason jars, tiny vases of Crayola colored flowers, and a large pitcher of hibiscus honey iced tea. As per his request I made buttermilk biscuits, potlikker kale, and a salad of vine ripened local tomatoes with Bonnie Blue herbed goat cheese, basil from my porch garden, and fleur de sel. For dessert he requested bittersweet spicy chocolate souffl\u00e9 (better and far easier than cake for me!) with homemade Lapsang Souchong ice cream. And, of course, there was buttermilk fried chicken.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

mason jar tea lights & flowers centerpiece<\/i><\/div>\n

\"tin<\/a><\/p>\n

all natural buttermilk \u201cdream biscuits\u201d<\/a> in my grandmother\u2019s biscuit cloth<\/i><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

vine ripened tomatoes from the Thursday market on Signal Mountain with Bonnie Blue herbed goat cheese & fresh basil<\/i><\/div>\n

\"mason<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

His birthday gift (other than fried chicken!): 3 chocolate bars and a vintage Oxford English Dictionary (not pictured) with it\u2019s original magnifying glass<\/i><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
\"Buttermilk<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
\n

Table of Contents<\/p>\nToggle<\/span><\/path><\/svg><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n