For some reason which eludes even me, I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately. Tuscany, Tennessee, Charleston, and Uruguay. This is a bizarre business, and enervating for a homebound kitchen pig like myself. But I also learned a few things. In Charleston, to take the most important example, I learned how to make the best fried chicken of all time; and if that’s not worth the trouble of getting on an airplane, what is?
Sean Brock is a young chef, the man behind two super restaurants, McCrady’s and Husk. McCrady’s does modern tweezer food; Husk is a celebration of southern tradiionalism. (”Husk” refers to the outer protective casing of a seed.) Of all the recipes and methods which Brock has revived at Husk, none were of more urgent interest to me than fried chicken. It’s not that I’m not interested in elderberry preserves, or hopping john, or hoe cakes; all those things are well and good, but I’ll never cook them and can barely be persuaded to eat them. But fried chicken! Fried chicken fills my dreams, my fantasies, and my night terrors; it is my most constant longing (well, almost) and the only food I would travel far from home to eat.
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And this I did. Brock’s fried chicken is the best in the country; certainly the best I ever had. And he does very little to it that you can’t do at home. He doesn’t use a pressure cooker; he doesn’t use 99-X, or any other kind of exotic powder; he doesn’t use a pressure cooker; he doesn’t use any kind of elaborate batters. Here is what he does do. He cures the chicken for a day in sweet tea, although I suspect that on other occasions he’s used Dr. Pepper and a a lot of other things. He dips it in buttermilk, and then in a mixture of flour and cornmeal that has been seasoned liberally with salt, pepper, and MSG. (MSG, I have learned, is the secret weapon of all soul food cooks. No, don’t thank me. I’m just hear to help.)
What really matters most is what happens next. The chicken goes into a cast iron pan filled with a mix of country ham fat, bacon fat, and lard. It’s not crazy hot; if it were, those porky elixirs would start burning and smoking. They are just hot enough to start gently sizzling. Brock turns them after a couple of minutes; they should be the color straw. He’s constantly turning them, moving them, and covering them for a few minutes at a time. The last six or seven minutes are uncovered, but until then the chicken is fried and steamed at the same time for most of its cooking.When the chicken isn’t bubbling much, it’s done. Brock’s master stroke is throwing a big lump of butter into the pan, which gives the brown crust even more craggy brown flavor that it would have had already. By the time he makes a by-the-book pan gravy, adding a little soy sauce in for umami oomph, and the the chicken is cooled enough to dip and eat, you are in a state of altered consciousness. My god. Who wouldn’t travel for chicken like this?