May 5, 2017 • 41 mins
Physics makes fried chicken delicious, and human prejudice makes its connotations problematic. We delve into the history and science behind (specifically southern-American-style) fried chicken.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm an Erie and
I'm Lauren bum and today we're talking about fried chicken.
I learned during our very first episode about champagne that
Lauren has never had homemade fried chickens. I'm not from
the South. I'm from Ohio and Florida. But you've been
in South for like twelve years now. I'm somewhat someone
(00:29):
the fault. The fault is on my friends. Friends. If
any listen to this. Yeah, man, oh that sounds lovely.
I've got a bone to pick with your friends. Fried
chicken puns come in. Oh no, so soon. It also
comes back full circles of champagne and fried chicken. So yeah. Chicken,
by the way, fried or not is the most popular
(00:51):
meat in the world. Yeah, Americans eat more than eighty
pounds a year. Uh and in Business Analysis cited fried
chicken small chains as the fastest growing and in chicken
entrees added three and reached five point four billion. And
in the same report, the in d P, which is
(01:13):
the market research group, described chicken as quote a faster
growing segment than burgers and fast food. Yeah, and Eater
named the Year of the fried Chicken. I also think
that every year is like probably dear fried chicken. Well, yeah,
all that, but also probably somebody called the year of
(01:34):
the Burger, and somebody else called it the year of
this thing and this thing. I don't know, maybe I'm cynical. Um.
For the reason that chicken fried chicken was that year
was because, UM, a lot of companies were trying to
come up with the fried chicken version of the so
called fast casual category. Because for a long time there
(01:56):
was faster chicken or expensive fancy Southern rest shrunk chicken,
fried chicken, but nothing nothing in between, really, um. And
one of the reasons for that is it's relatively difficult
to keep it a consistent product, um, and also relatively
chicken you to prepare because you can't have pink chicken.
(02:19):
No no, no, you can't cook your chicken medium. That's
not a chicken. You can do that with beef, but
not a chicken, and overcooked chicken is gross. So you've
got a very tight even know of what makes a
good fried chicken. But when we say fried chicken, we're
referring to probably a very specific thing. What what are
(02:39):
we talking about? Uh? Being from the South, I think
of American and particularly Southern tike fried chicken, which is
usually bone in chicken dipped in seasoned flour, are crumb
breading usually well, I don't know about usually, but it's
often soaked in buttermilk or the like before and then
(03:02):
it can either be pan fried, deep fried, pressure fried
in oil. Oil can vary. Yes, any type of liquid
fat can be used technically several cultures around the world.
Do you have a totally different take on fried chicken? Um,
some fried bone free chicken pieces without flour or breading.
I think it's pretty popular in Asian countries. Um or
(03:25):
bone in pieces that are braised after being fried. Um.
I guess you could say, like buffalo wings are technically
fried chicken that just has a bunch of sauce. Yeah,
that's not what I think of when I think of
our chicken. But I'm sometimes surprised when buffalo wings show
up and I'm like, oh, this is fried chicken. I
have to remind myself that I just ordered fried chicken, right,
(03:47):
I baked my buffalo wings. There's there's also the thing
of battered fried chicken pieces, like like a like a
tempora kind of battering or like a tongue. It would
be tonkatsu with it, because that's pork fried. But like, yeah, similar, yes, yes,
I'm getting hungry already. I almost written the notes about
(04:11):
four times, like oh, I'm so hungry now. And there's
a Hops Chicken right downstairs that has really good fried chickens.
And then and then of course, yeah, you've got other
American versions of fried chicken. You've you've got chicken nuggets
and chicken tenders and chicken fingers. Um. You can fry
chicken into a cutlet. You can. You've got fried chicken
(04:34):
sandwiches and chicken biscuits, all those things. Althora of waste
to eat your fried chicken. Um. But why why would
you want to fry something anyway? Well, like scientifically other
than just it's delicious um uh. Frying food has a
few different benefits. First of all, it's quick, um, so Okay,
(04:55):
when you bake or boil something, the main thing that
you's that you're using to transfer heat from your cooking
object to the food is either water or air, uh,
because you're boiling it in water and airs is what's
mostly transferring heat to to food in an oven. Oils
are better at transferring infrared radiation A K a heat
than water or air are, so the cooking happens faster.
(05:19):
It is no coincidence that fast foods fast food foods,
yes are are largely fried foods. Oh it's pretty quick, okay,
I mean otherwise, I mean, what what are you doing?
Like like like, oh, yeah, just hold on, you're braised
to order. Chicken is going to be ready in minutes.
I've totally always thought it was just because Americans like
(05:41):
unhealthy food and fried food is difficult to mess up.
It Also, frying deals with the steam that's coming out
of cooking food in a really chemically awesome way. So okay,
you know how when you open your oven or a
covered pan, you really don't want to put your face
right there because of all the steam that's going to
(06:02):
come out, because Steve steam burns suck. Yeah. Uh. That
that steam is water that's vaporizing out of the food
that you're cooking, which it does when the water in
the food that you're cooking reaches two twelve degrees fahrenheit
a k a hundred degrees celsius. When you fry something,
that steam that that water vapor is met with a
(06:23):
wall of solid oil. As we all know, oil and
water don't mix, so the steam that's coming out of
the food actually holds the oil slightly at bay, which
which prevents it from penetrating the food surface. This is
part of why you really want to wait until oil
is appropriately hot before you drop food in. That's going
to lead to that greasy, soggy kind of kind of fry.
(06:45):
Get sometimes it's the worst. Now, um, by the worst,
I mean kind of delicious anyway. Again, so good fat
is delicious, okay. Um. Another thing the steam here, Um,
the steam coming out is only two d and twelve
degrees um. The oil around it is much hotter, so
(07:08):
the steam actually cools down the oil in the area
immediately surrounding your food item. Um. This plus that oil
water thing that I just mentioned prevents the oil from
burning the surface of the food while the interior is cooking.
That's pretty amazing actually, right like fry everything for science,
(07:30):
just to appreciate the amazingness that is chicken tender you're
stuffing into your face and and speaking of the amazing
nous that is that chicken tender. Okay, So, so frying
foods makes them crispy on the outside because once most
of the water has vaporized out of the kind of
outer layer of your food, and while simultaneously the interior,
(07:55):
the interior of your food is just about at the
correct temperature for you to do the thing where you
put it in your face. Once most of that water
is out, the slightly dehydrated surface starts coming into direct
contact with the oil, with which just crisps it up
all all beautifully. Thinking of crispy, let's crisp up our history.
What a great segue. Let's step back a bit, an
(08:18):
enormous way back bite, not a little bit, no big bit.
The chicken is thought to have been domesticated in Southeast
Asia sometime between seven thousand, five hundred and five thousand BC.
Because of that whole growing at daybreak thing, chickens were
sometimes believed to have the ability to see into the future,
(08:41):
and that's one of the reasons experts think that chickens
were domesticated, probably because because they were thought to be
divine and two divine to eat. Okay, yep, But as
the chickens were traded, some cultures accepted the chickens rep
as a divine creature, and others dismissed it. Using chickens
(09:05):
and all kinds of things like cock fighting, entertainment, eating them,
sacrificing them to gods, that kind of stuff, all the
things that you can do with chicken. Sh I'm sure, um,
but it wasn't long before cooking and eating chicken became
the standard, never mind their morning predicting abilities. Uh. First,
(09:26):
fried chicken was often relegated to royalty in aristocracy and
just a note they were they were using older hens
that were um fried and then braced. So not quite
how most of us in the West again anyway think
of fried chicken. But over time it made its way
(09:48):
to a much wider audience, including Africa, Great Britain in
the US and and the brazen like what I believe
was often a cream sauce of some kind. Yeah. According
to food timeline dot org um, part of the difficulty
in tracing the history of fried foods lies partly in
the word fried, because, as is the case with so
(10:11):
many things Lauren and I talked about, UM, it is
evolved and it's gone through or gone by many different names.
And deep fried didn't appear in written form into the
nineteen thirties, but cookbooks were describing deep frying processes before then. Um, like.
One example that food Timeline dot Org gave was the
(10:32):
Boston Cooking School Cookbook of four UM. Furthermore, a recipe
for like non dredged pan or oven fried chicken appears
in a book that I didn't check the nip pronunciation of.
I believe it's a pitious. I'll go with that. I'm
gonna I'm gonna go with it. Yeah. Uh Opicious, which
(10:53):
is a cookbook from Rome thought to have been collected
around five hundred to six hundred b c um. The
of the spices that go into it involved dill and coriander,
which are totally what you fried like spices that I
would associate with fried chicken these days, which is crazy
to me. That's interesting. I mean that sounds like a
like it's halfway to like the Chick fil a fried
(11:14):
chicken recipe. Yeah, it really does. Chickens may not be
native to Africa, but as early as chickens were in Egypt,
and they became pretty common in West and Central Africa
after that, in part because they were one of the
few livestock at the dreaded chets fly did not target
uh huh cool uh. The association with spirituality continued UM
(11:38):
eggs were used in religious ceremonies, the chicken itself was
the most commonly sacrificed animal. Um chickens grew to become
a pretty common ingredient in West African cuisine, and it
wasn't long before fried chicken pieces started showing up in
homes markets if we look at Europe, one of the
first written recipes of Western typically thought of as quote
(12:00):
American style fried chicken appeared in at seven British cookbook
written by handle Glass titled of Cookery Made Plain and Easy,
Plain and Easy, I Love Cookery. The recipe called for
coating pieces of chicken and flour and frying it in
hog's lard. This was already the preferred method of the Scottish,
(12:24):
as opposed to the English, who pretty much just boiled
or baked it. The Scottish are also thought to be
the first Europeans to fried chicken. That they differed from
West African take because they didn't use any spices in
the battery they put on the chicken. Okay, and the
recipe was called quote to Marinate Chicken Simple to the point,
(12:44):
and the book itself was a hit in both Europe
and the United States. Battered fried chicken recipes meanwhile, started
popping up around the late eighteen thirties in Southern American cookbooks, right,
and the term Southern fried chicken didn't pop up and
writing until But fried chicken in the South had a
(13:06):
long history before that. And there are a couple of
boys fried chicken may have become this Southern thing. And
here we come to food's just patented food sadness part
of the episode. Yes, welcome to be depressed about a
food that you love. You knew it was coming. So
the arrival of West African slaves to the South is
(13:28):
one way Southern fried chicken could have originated. Uh, slaves
were allowed to keep chickens, which is unusual. They usually
they generally were not allowed to possess farm animals or
anything really. And the reason they were allowed to keep
chickens is because, um, they could serve as an alarm
(13:52):
and also white people just didn't want them. Yeah, it
was the food, So it was the food source that
white people didn't care about exactly. Slaves could in some
cases raise these chickens and possibly sell them to their
owners or other slave owners. According to the World of
(14:13):
a Slave Encyclopedia of the material life of slaves in
the United States. There are records dating back to the
seventeen thirties of travelers mentioning and writing that slaves were
selling chicken in Carolina Low Country. They raising and selling
of chickens was one of the only ways for African
Americans to accumulate any money or items like other other
(14:34):
material not not wealth but stuff basics, And the chicken
business was pretty much run by black people, and thus
it was associated with black people, and the cooking of
chicken was in particular associated with black women because they
were the ones who usually do um and black women
(14:56):
would sometimes sell their cooked off and fried chicken at
train stations. There are records of describing black women waiter
carriers who served fried chicken to white passengers on trains,
and in some cases, black female slaves left left recipes behind,
including in Abbey fishers book What Miss Fisher Knows about
(15:21):
Old Southern Cooking, which is thought to be the first
cookbook published by an African American. Aside from being just
an amazing title, I know for a cookbook, I've I've
enjoyed all the titles of cookbooks so far. Yeah, not
a whole lot of duds and you knew we couldn't
do this episode without talking about awful stereo time. Okay,
(15:43):
here we go. Because fried chicken was so closely associated
with black people, even though they themselves didn't eat that
much of it, because the ingredients outside of the chicken
at the time where Yeah, getting that much cooking oil
was expensive, even though it is a rather economical use
for cooking oil, assuming that you don't burn the oil,
you can reuse it. But you also need the flower.
(16:05):
But you need the flower, you need the spices you're using.
Spices are very pricey. Um. And white people used it
as an excuse to say and write and draw terrible things,
really terrible things. Yeah, really awful. Good job. History, black
people were negatively depicted as chicken thieves primarily, but also
chicken fryers and eaters, and this continued into the nineteenth
(16:28):
century as another way to keep newly freed slaves from integrating,
and the stereotype is still around to this day. It
is because people could could really stand to do better. Yeah,
they could. I myself went to an event not at
my the university I attended, but at different university. I
(16:50):
won't name it, but they it was Black History Month
and they were serving like fried chicken and great crater, right,
what is it? It's great cool, a oh great cool
and watermelon. And I was like, this is not a thing,
this is not I want to be participated. I need
to go somewhere else right now. And another interesting note, um,
(17:11):
West African slaves also brought with them the chickens association
with spirituality, and it's not uncommon to find piles of
chicken bones which can remains buried around plantations in ways
that hearkened back to those spiritual traditions. And kind of
from this, the chicken was christened the preachers bird infots,
(17:32):
that was what it was called. And Um, the chicken
in some form or another was frequently served at Sunday
family get together so celebrations, in part because it was
easy to transport. Uh. And to this day, I frequently
see chicken dinners um or bunches on Sundays, usually served
communal style. It's pretty certainly common around Atlanta. So that's
(17:55):
one way fried chicken in the South might have become
kind of synonymous. Another way has to do with Scotland
an accident. I'm not even gonna oh me me neither
not today, I'm unprepared. Yeah, that's that's a whole weeks. Yeah,
you need to bring in a coach. We should have
(18:16):
invested in that. But yeah, Scotland because as as we
said above, Um, the Scottish may have been the first
Europeans who are frying chicken um in a vaguely similar
way to the West African tradition, although fewer spices in
the in the breading and um. And they may have
when when Scottish immigrants arrived in the American South, they
may have brought their recipes for frying chicken along with them. Um.
(18:40):
But hey, another depressing note. Fried chicken also had its
cultural stigma in Scotland. Back back home, it was associated
with poor people who could not afford bee for pork.
You know, when I was first researching this, um, there
was a lot of uh like search was that were
(19:00):
who buck chicken? Fried chicken to the South? Was Scottish
immigrants or West African slaves? And I was curious about
if it was Scottish immigrants, why was it the South?
And then a lot of people are saying, and I
have heard this that the thieves and less word for
(19:21):
that desirables I mean, I'm not saying it. Saying it. Yeah, yeah,
went to the South. And I know I have a
friend whom she claims that her family was sent to
the South for stealing chickens in Scotland. Yeah, it's like, oh,
(19:42):
that's fascinating. Yeah. So I wasn't able to find too
much truth in that. I also didn't have much time
to spend on it because I feel like a lot
of these episodes they lead into all these pasts and
I'm like, no, I want to learn everything about the
chicken being divined, and like, chi, we can do another
episode about divine in chickens. Some well known Southerners also
(20:03):
helped popular popularized fried chicken as as like a general
pop culture thing, right, And one of the first mentions
of fried chicken in the US came from the seventeen
hundreds diary. And I find this adorable that he wrote
about it in his Diary of a Governor of the
Virginia Colony, William Bird Bird joke. Oh sorry, I didn't.
(20:28):
I didn't have a good one. I just wanted to
say it. No, I understand. In eighteen four, Martha Rudolph,
who was related in law to Thomas Jefferson published a
popular cookbook with a nearly identical fried chicken recipe to
handed glasses aforementioned Wrisby called The Virginia Housewife. So so
(20:48):
it was the thing that was going around. It was,
and it was popular, especially on Sundays. Is like the
fancy dinner, especially in the upper class of the South.
And then around eight seventy eight, the first written instance
of Maryland fried chicken, which is something I had never
heard of before. It's fried chicken served with us with
(21:09):
like a gravy. It's it's a gravy type thing, chicken gravy. Okay.
It appeared on a menu in Saratoga, New York's Grand
Union Hotel. Mm hmm. And that's generally what we think
is why Southern fried chicken is a thing, why fried
chicken is associated with the South. And that brings us
(21:31):
to the next step in fried chickens timeline. But first
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
we're back, Thank you so much, sponsor. Uh so yeah,
still more history, right, fast food chains? How How did
(21:54):
how did this? How did this happen? It happened with
as with many things advancing in technology, because fried uh
fast food. Chicken fried or otherwise was not really a
thing we could do until chicken farming technology improved, making
chicken farming easier cheaper, and that made fried chicken less
(22:19):
of a special Sunday meal two more of a something
that could be enjoyed cheaply, relatively quickly, and more. It
just occurred to me that that all this like improvement
technology is improved, certainly improvement for us, it's probably definitely
not improvement for the chickens, and it's probably led to
the really terrible conditions the chickens are kept in these days,
(22:41):
which I guess we should spend a depressing episode talking about,
but that's not this episode. That's a later date. All
these advancements did not immediately equal fast food. It still
took about twenty minutes to fry some chicken, which that yeah,
that would not fly out. No, not none of fast
(23:02):
no standards like more than thirty two seconds. But with
some innovation, methods of frying large amounts of chicken and
keeping the fried chicken pieces warm and crisp were invented.
And one of these fried chicken innovators was Colonel halland Sanders.
Holland sand does he say yeah, so, Colonel Colonel Sanders, um,
(23:24):
the actual Colonel Sanders. He started franchising Kentucky Kentucky Fried
Chicken in the nineties, and that success led to the
introduction of a bunch of other fried fried chicken fast
food places Harald's Chicken, Check Churches, Popeye, Bojangles, Chick fil
a Um. In fact, one of the founders of Bojangles,
(23:45):
Richard Thomas, started out owning and operating KFC franchises and
would eventually become the president of operations for the entire chain. Interesting, however,
this this boom of fried Chicken in the nine sixties
following KFC, could not be maintained. And um, all these strange, little, little,
(24:06):
little small regional franchises, a lot of them had a
pop star eat either a black or white pop star
lend their name to them, Minnie Pearl, James Brown, Mahalia Jackson, um.
But all of these franchises would kind of boom and
then bust by the nineteen seventies. M hm did not know.
That kind of reminds me of Gladys Knights Chicken Wabbles.
(24:29):
Oh yeah, that one too. Oh I know I was
missing one. That's Georgia Laurence. I'm sorry, Gladys, I didn't.
We're going to get a letter in the middle. We
got to talk about Colonel Sanders. Oh yeah, he was.
He was a really fascinating human person. And in case
(24:50):
anyone doesn't know this, I feel like a lot of
people do. He was a Kentucky colonel, not like a
actual Army colonel. Totally separate thing. Yes, very different. Uh.
In his early life he was a lawyer before he
got into a fight with his old client in the courtroom,
so end of career there. He was involved in a
(25:13):
shootout with a competitor of his first restaurant after the
competitor repainted a gas station sign advertising for Colonel Sanders
restaurant to redirect traffic to the competitor's restaurant. And I
was a shootout situation. He was like, what should happen now?
Is a shootout? Okay? The competitor hit the guy Sanders
(25:37):
was with who was Sanders boss, uh and killed him
and was convicted of murder. Goodness and Sanders remained the
symbol and spokesperson for KFC even after he sold it
in nineteen sixty four, and he would do spot checks
at KFC's around the country and if he found the
food lacking, he'd tell the owner of the KFC he
(26:01):
was visiting something along the lines of the food was
quote god slop. And he went on to soothe the
then parent company of KFC who Blind Incorporated um over
misuse of his likeness and selling stuff that he didn't
have our want to have any part of. He also
(26:24):
really did not like that they moved the headquarters out
of Kentucky. Really made it mad. Yeah, well it's not
Kentucky Fried Chicken anymore at that point, who Bline Inc.
Countersued in nineteen alleging libel after Sanders publicly described KFCs
gravy as quote sludge with a quote wallpaper taste and
(26:49):
that it quote ain't fit for my dogs. Who I
lost the case. Man Sanders was sued again by who
Blind after he and his wife reopened to their Shelby
Thelle location restaurant under the name Claudia Sanders Dinner House,
which you can still visit to this day, and they
were talking about the possibility of franchising at KFC tends
(27:11):
the suit Blinds like no way. Sanders settled. Uh, and
he's just such an interesting character. He's often used as
like an example of a small businessman who really struggled
and then succeeded, because apparently he was always on the
brink of total destitution. Um. And I want to thank
(27:31):
Stuff you should know for turning me onto this. Those
are those are pretty okay, guys. Yeah yeah, if you guys,
you guys don't listen to stuff you should know, Probably
every single one of you does. But yeah, that's probably
why you're here right now. And KFC is hugely popular
outside of the US. It's familiarized people the world over
with American style ish fried chickens. And as someone who
(27:54):
travels a lot the fast food chains, I generally see
the most of our KFC and Subway and what I
call stealthy McDonald's. Stealthy McDonald's. Yeah, they're like made to
look really fancy and okay, they don't have the yellow arches.
Weird go and it's totally McDonald's. How strange. Um uh uh.
(28:16):
It should be mentioned here that other than the founder
of Harold's Chicken Shack, who is Harold Pierce, all of
the entrepreneurs who opened the surviving fried chicken franchises were
white dudes, which you know, it's not unexpected, but perhaps
strange is that an okay word for it? Strange being
(28:37):
that it's this food associated with black women specifically, And yeah, sure, um,
but there is a story about one of the failed
chains from the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies
that is really strangely hopeful. Um. It's the one that
Mahalia Jackson lent her name to. And Jackson, if you're unfamiliar,
was a gospel singer and activist who moved to Chicago
(29:00):
from the South and worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Um.
The restaurants in her name were owned and operated entirely
by black people and and really provided opportunities in their communities.
The chain's co founder, Benjamin Hooks, was a lawyer and
eventually a judge who would go on to lead the
Double A c P for for like a couple of decades. Almost. Um.
(29:23):
There's a really really beautiful piece about all of this
in Gravy, which is the magazine of the Southern Food
Ways Alliance, which is all around awesome. Um. Gravy is
also a podcast, by the way, if you haven't listened
to it, go check that out because they do amazing
stories all the time. Yeah, the availability and popularity of
fried chicken at fast food restaurants burned all of these
(29:46):
new takes on fried chicken, especially when it comes to
hearing it was something you wouldn't traditionally bear with, like
sweet waffles, chicken and waffles, or champagne. Yes, I know
we've said it before, We'll stand again. Also, this was
in the article I was reading, So it's not just us.
It's not just us red hot chicken that's like crazy
(30:07):
popular right now. Yeah. Yeah, or or Nashville style, which
I still don't think is technically a thing, but in Nashville,
but it's it's delicious. There's North Carolina style, and then
all kinds of international flavors that are getting popularity here
in the United States. I okay, look y'all. I started
delving into all of the health hubbub surrounding fried foods
(30:29):
so that we could do a health section in this
in this our podcast episode. Um, but it's it's really
going to need to be its own episode. Uh. There's
so much debate and research going into how different types
of oils react to different cooking temperatures and and what compounds.
They then release I in a brief summary way can
(30:49):
tell you like basically, don't don't eat hell of fried
foods all the time, but also don't stress out about it.
This reminds me of in high school. I had to
come up with the diet. It was part of our
health class, and my diet was I don't remember what
I called it, but the slogan was in moderation our
(31:11):
face obliteration, and I was clever that way. Essentially, that's
what we say and a lot of these things. Yeah, yeah,
like fat isn't terrible. Yeah, just just go easy, you know, ye,
moderate yourself. Um, but if you're choosing for you know,
today to not be the day that you're moderating yourself,
We've got a few tips for you on how to
(31:34):
best do that at home. But first we're gonna take
one more break for a quick word from our sponsor
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So some tips for
cooking at home, which I am delighted that Lauren wrote,
(31:57):
even though she's never done it. There are lots of
fashionals out there who have written really good things about it.
I totally I don't believe you, and they all check
out from the science point of view. Okay, okay, okay, no,
I want I want to get your perspective on it. Okay,
here we go. Tell me, tell me if I'm leading people. Okay,
(32:21):
First of all, you're gonna want a cast iron skillet
or perhaps a Dutch oven, because the iron in either
of those kind of objects is going to keep its
temperature better than other materials like like aluminum or something
like that. Right, yeah, and that temperature. Yes, you're also
going to want to use a probe thermometer to keep
the oil at the correct temperature. M That is true.
(32:41):
I've always just put flour in there. Oh yeah, how
do how does that work? If it's sizzles, then it's
that it's the right temperature. Yeah, like sizzles and makes
this little little dot doball. Next, I mean, perhaps, obviously,
use the best quality chicken that you can find and
or afford, you know, check the ingredients label for things
other than sicken. Yeah, which sounds obvious, But some packaged
(33:02):
meats have flavor added, which generally is not a good sign. Um. However,
I mean, don't feel bad if that's what you've got
to work with. Eat food. Food is great, Um, You're
also going to want to get yourself some neutral flavored
oil like canola to um to to to use for frying.
I mean, I wouldn't not suggest lard, but I've heard
(33:23):
chrisco is a is a popular one. But um, but
you know, uh yeah, neutral flavored so that the natural
chicken flavors really come through through. Yeah, especially if you've
got the good chicken exactly. Yeah. Especially then A step
that I have seen a proposed strongly is to brine
the chicken overnight. Is this an important one? Okay, she's
(33:47):
oh or the schools of thought, there are schools of
oh goodness. It also comes up when it comes to turkey. Yeah, okay,
well okay, Uh. The the proponents that I've seen brining say,
you know, basically, brining will make the finished product juicier
and more tender because the meat absorbs some of that
(34:09):
that salty liquid um and salt um de Nature's protein proteins,
you know, are big folded up messes of molecules, like
like necklaces that have somehow merged while sitting in your
jewelry box, or um, like a bit of straying after
your your cat or your child has gotten to it
um and salt relaxes some proteins, which makes muscle fibers
(34:30):
less tough, and let's water molecules move in and hang out,
meaning that the cooked meat will have more moisture and
and be more tender. Oh man, the face, the face
that Annie is making at me is real doubtful though, No, no, no, no,
I actually think that this is um. The pendulum is
swinging towards this side of the argument that brining is
(34:54):
the way to go, and it does really help. I
personally never do it because I don't have to. Everybody's
typing away. It doesn't take along any well, I mean
to be fair to to make a brine, it does
take a little bit of time because you're for for
a good basic Brian, You're gonna take like four cups
of water, a half a cup of sugar for for chicken.
(35:15):
I've heard sugar is a good addition um, and about
a fourth cup of salt. You bring it all to
a boil and stir so that it dissolves, then allowed
to cool completely before you put your chicken in it
um and then let it soak overnight for like twelve
hours at least in the fridge and so that's so,
that's like a that is a whole process. Yeah. Usually
(35:37):
when I'm making fried chicken, I'm making it so fast
before I can convince myself that I really should be
eating something healthier. I don't eat any time for me
to change my mind. I do believe I've should do it.
Brining tastes. I think that it probably taste test. Yeah,
here's our taste test of the episode. Okay, alright, more advice.
(36:00):
If you're dredging it in buttermilk before you apply the
breading flour coating UM, then then use a really thin dridge.
I don't know. That's the thing I read. I will
believe that is also something I don't do. I have
done it again when I have like more time. My mom. Okay,
(36:20):
my mom does it, and it does. It's good when
you're when you're frying um. The amount of oil that
you should put in the pan is about like half
to three quarters of an inch, which is like one
point three to one point nine, and the oil temperature
should be three five degrees fahrenheit a k A hundred
and sixty three degrees celsius if you're measuring it. My
(36:40):
mom her number one tip when I first tried to
make fried chicken on my own, was that make sure
it's hot enough and don't overcrowd the pan. Yeah, oh
that's yeah, that's that's definitely a thing that I read about.
You should cook in batches, that you don't overcrowd the
pan because doing so brings down the temperature of the
oil more than you want, which will lead to that
(37:01):
to that greasy chicken that the steam action that I
mentioned at the top of the show won't be able
to do its thing. Oh yeah, no, greasy chicken, don't
do it. Um. And then that you should serve it
immediately or transfer it to an oven like just below
boiling point, like like two degrees fahrenheits something like that,
like nine degrees Elsie's. They're about um to keep it
(37:24):
warm and crisp. This is a much fancier way of
doing it than me. And I don't mean that in
a bad way at all. That because fried chicken, like
I said, it's one of my favorite things. Yeah, so
I wonder if I did this, if there would be
a whole another world of like or maybe maybe they're
both equally delicious. Yeah, I mean, at the end of
(37:45):
the day, you're frying something that's tasty and then you're
eating it. Uh. And I think that that just about
wraps up everything that we have to say about fried chicken.
But let us turn for a moment to some listener mail.
Y'all you all right stuff and it's great. Yeah, we
love it. So Veronica wrote in to say, first and foremost,
(38:06):
I absolutely love your podcast, especially the puns. Yes, thank you,
Thank you, Veronica. Okay, back to Varonca. I'm from San Antonio, Texas,
and I remember the Nighthawk frozen dinners. They came in
a boring brown box and we're not superhero worthy at all.
I had no idea they were Texas based, but I
remember eating the mini frozen dinners at Grandma's house. I
(38:27):
even remember eating the half frozen steak. We didn't have
a great microwave and soggy tater tots. I can't believe
I liked those, but he definitely brought up a nice
childhood memory. I look forward to your next episode. Thank you, Nic,
it's wonderful. I was so ah van those those nighthawks. Yeah,
you're bad. We don't live up to the superhero standard.
(38:49):
Guy Bird elevated herself to hero status in my book
by sending in this. She wrote in the Unsweetened History
and Tech of Sugar, and he mentioned trying a dessert
called peanut butter ice gravel and searching for it again
for years. Yes, I did, back the sky Bird, Well,
look no further. Yes, it is called bingsha, which does
(39:11):
translate to ice sand, but it's really a cross between
a smoothie and a frap. Note the Chinese do call
sugar sha tongue with the first character often referring to gravel,
but a better translation for the term is granulated sugar mhm.
And the recipe is as followed. She sent a recipe.
(39:32):
I was so happy, I like, I jumped out of
my chair to your table. Spoons, peanut butter, one cup ice,
one tablespoon white sugar, half a cup fresh milk, condensed
milk to taste. Throw it all in a blender and
blend until the ice crystals disappear. So easy, Back to
sky Bird. There's really not actually that much sugar in
this dessert, so enjoy it to your heart's content. I
(39:54):
do recommend looking for this dessert in Hong Kong or
Taiwan restaurants because their restaurant versions are giant and extravagant.
I will enjoy this to my heart's content. Thank you,
thank you, thank you sky Bird for sending you this. Oh,
we should do a video. We should do a little
a little video for social Oh it's gonna bring back
so many memories of my time in China. I can't
(40:16):
wait to taste it. Also, congrats to Amanda and Elizabeth
who answered the pizza bonus call. When it comes to yogurt,
that was actually something we talked about in our Frozen
Food episode because of the way recording and publishing schedules
work very bizarre. But they both sent two different recipes
for pizza involving yogurt, which is oh, man, yeah, it's
(40:40):
both in the dough like, oh, that sounds great. Yeah,
I know. I was like, how could how could this
have alluded us? Thank you? Thank you both. If you
would like to email us recipes or ideas or anything else,
we have an email address at food step at how
(41:00):
stuff works dot com. Yes, we also have a couple
of social media accounts. You can find us on Twitter.
Our address there is at food stuff hs W stands
for how Stuff Works. The company that owns us We're
also on Instagram, are handled there is just at food stuff.
We hope to hear from you, because hearing from you
so far has been extremely lovely. It really is um
(41:22):
and you will hear from us again sometime soon. We
hope that many more good things in the meanwhile are
coming your way
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm an Erie and
I'm Lauren bum and today we're talking about fried chicken.
I learned during our very first episode about champagne that
Lauren has never had homemade fried chickens. I'm not from
the South. I'm from Ohio and Florida. But you've been
in South for like twelve years now. I'm somewhat someone
(00:29):
the fault. The fault is on my friends. Friends. If
any listen to this. Yeah, man, oh that sounds lovely.
I've got a bone to pick with your friends. Fried
chicken puns come in. Oh no, so soon. It also
comes back full circles of champagne and fried chicken. So yeah. Chicken,
by the way, fried or not is the most popular
(00:51):
meat in the world. Yeah, Americans eat more than eighty
pounds a year. Uh and in Business Analysis cited fried
chicken small chains as the fastest growing and in chicken
entrees added three and reached five point four billion. And
in the same report, the in d P, which is
(01:13):
the market research group, described chicken as quote a faster
growing segment than burgers and fast food. Yeah, and Eater
named the Year of the fried Chicken. I also think
that every year is like probably dear fried chicken. Well, yeah,
all that, but also probably somebody called the year of
(01:34):
the Burger, and somebody else called it the year of
this thing and this thing. I don't know, maybe I'm cynical. Um.
For the reason that chicken fried chicken was that year
was because, UM, a lot of companies were trying to
come up with the fried chicken version of the so
called fast casual category. Because for a long time there
(01:56):
was faster chicken or expensive fancy Southern rest shrunk chicken,
fried chicken, but nothing nothing in between, really, um. And
one of the reasons for that is it's relatively difficult
to keep it a consistent product, um, and also relatively
chicken you to prepare because you can't have pink chicken.
(02:19):
No no, no, you can't cook your chicken medium. That's
not a chicken. You can do that with beef, but
not a chicken, and overcooked chicken is gross. So you've
got a very tight even know of what makes a
good fried chicken. But when we say fried chicken, we're
referring to probably a very specific thing. What what are
(02:39):
we talking about? Uh? Being from the South, I think
of American and particularly Southern tike fried chicken, which is
usually bone in chicken dipped in seasoned flour, are crumb
breading usually well, I don't know about usually, but it's
often soaked in buttermilk or the like before and then
(03:02):
it can either be pan fried, deep fried, pressure fried
in oil. Oil can vary. Yes, any type of liquid
fat can be used technically several cultures around the world.
Do you have a totally different take on fried chicken? Um,
some fried bone free chicken pieces without flour or breading.
I think it's pretty popular in Asian countries. Um or
(03:25):
bone in pieces that are braised after being fried. Um.
I guess you could say, like buffalo wings are technically
fried chicken that just has a bunch of sauce. Yeah,
that's not what I think of when I think of
our chicken. But I'm sometimes surprised when buffalo wings show
up and I'm like, oh, this is fried chicken. I
have to remind myself that I just ordered fried chicken, right,
(03:47):
I baked my buffalo wings. There's there's also the thing
of battered fried chicken pieces, like like a like a
tempora kind of battering or like a tongue. It would
be tonkatsu with it, because that's pork fried. But like, yeah, similar, yes, yes,
I'm getting hungry already. I almost written the notes about
(04:11):
four times, like oh, I'm so hungry now. And there's
a Hops Chicken right downstairs that has really good fried chickens.
And then and then of course, yeah, you've got other
American versions of fried chicken. You've you've got chicken nuggets
and chicken tenders and chicken fingers. Um. You can fry
chicken into a cutlet. You can. You've got fried chicken
(04:34):
sandwiches and chicken biscuits, all those things. Althora of waste
to eat your fried chicken. Um. But why why would
you want to fry something anyway? Well, like scientifically other
than just it's delicious um uh. Frying food has a
few different benefits. First of all, it's quick, um, so Okay,
(04:55):
when you bake or boil something, the main thing that
you's that you're using to transfer heat from your cooking
object to the food is either water or air, uh,
because you're boiling it in water and airs is what's
mostly transferring heat to to food in an oven. Oils
are better at transferring infrared radiation A K a heat
than water or air are, so the cooking happens faster.
(05:19):
It is no coincidence that fast foods fast food foods,
yes are are largely fried foods. Oh it's pretty quick, okay,
I mean otherwise, I mean, what what are you doing?
Like like like, oh, yeah, just hold on, you're braised
to order. Chicken is going to be ready in minutes.
I've totally always thought it was just because Americans like
(05:41):
unhealthy food and fried food is difficult to mess up.
It Also, frying deals with the steam that's coming out
of cooking food in a really chemically awesome way. So okay,
you know how when you open your oven or a
covered pan, you really don't want to put your face
right there because of all the steam that's going to
(06:02):
come out, because Steve steam burns suck. Yeah. Uh. That
that steam is water that's vaporizing out of the food
that you're cooking, which it does when the water in
the food that you're cooking reaches two twelve degrees fahrenheit
a k a hundred degrees celsius. When you fry something,
that steam that that water vapor is met with a
(06:23):
wall of solid oil. As we all know, oil and
water don't mix, so the steam that's coming out of
the food actually holds the oil slightly at bay, which
which prevents it from penetrating the food surface. This is
part of why you really want to wait until oil
is appropriately hot before you drop food in. That's going
to lead to that greasy, soggy kind of kind of fry.
(06:45):
Get sometimes it's the worst. Now, um, by the worst,
I mean kind of delicious anyway. Again, so good fat
is delicious, okay. Um. Another thing the steam here, Um,
the steam coming out is only two d and twelve
degrees um. The oil around it is much hotter, so
(07:08):
the steam actually cools down the oil in the area
immediately surrounding your food item. Um. This plus that oil
water thing that I just mentioned prevents the oil from
burning the surface of the food while the interior is cooking.
That's pretty amazing actually, right like fry everything for science,
(07:30):
just to appreciate the amazingness that is chicken tender you're
stuffing into your face and and speaking of the amazing
nous that is that chicken tender. Okay, So, so frying
foods makes them crispy on the outside because once most
of the water has vaporized out of the kind of
outer layer of your food, and while simultaneously the interior,
(07:55):
the interior of your food is just about at the
correct temperature for you to do the thing where you
put it in your face. Once most of that water
is out, the slightly dehydrated surface starts coming into direct
contact with the oil, with which just crisps it up
all all beautifully. Thinking of crispy, let's crisp up our history.
What a great segue. Let's step back a bit, an
(08:18):
enormous way back bite, not a little bit, no big bit.
The chicken is thought to have been domesticated in Southeast
Asia sometime between seven thousand, five hundred and five thousand BC.
Because of that whole growing at daybreak thing, chickens were
sometimes believed to have the ability to see into the future,
(08:41):
and that's one of the reasons experts think that chickens
were domesticated, probably because because they were thought to be
divine and two divine to eat. Okay, yep, But as
the chickens were traded, some cultures accepted the chickens rep
as a divine creature, and others dismissed it. Using chickens
(09:05):
and all kinds of things like cock fighting, entertainment, eating them,
sacrificing them to gods, that kind of stuff, all the
things that you can do with chicken. Sh I'm sure, um,
but it wasn't long before cooking and eating chicken became
the standard, never mind their morning predicting abilities. Uh. First,
(09:26):
fried chicken was often relegated to royalty in aristocracy and
just a note they were they were using older hens
that were um fried and then braced. So not quite
how most of us in the West again anyway think
of fried chicken. But over time it made its way
(09:48):
to a much wider audience, including Africa, Great Britain in
the US and and the brazen like what I believe
was often a cream sauce of some kind. Yeah. According
to food timeline dot org um, part of the difficulty
in tracing the history of fried foods lies partly in
the word fried, because, as is the case with so
(10:11):
many things Lauren and I talked about, UM, it is
evolved and it's gone through or gone by many different names.
And deep fried didn't appear in written form into the
nineteen thirties, but cookbooks were describing deep frying processes before then. Um, like.
One example that food Timeline dot Org gave was the
(10:32):
Boston Cooking School Cookbook of four UM. Furthermore, a recipe
for like non dredged pan or oven fried chicken appears
in a book that I didn't check the nip pronunciation of.
I believe it's a pitious. I'll go with that. I'm
gonna I'm gonna go with it. Yeah. Uh Opicious, which
(10:53):
is a cookbook from Rome thought to have been collected
around five hundred to six hundred b c um. The
of the spices that go into it involved dill and coriander,
which are totally what you fried like spices that I
would associate with fried chicken these days, which is crazy
to me. That's interesting. I mean that sounds like a
like it's halfway to like the Chick fil a fried
(11:14):
chicken recipe. Yeah, it really does. Chickens may not be
native to Africa, but as early as chickens were in Egypt,
and they became pretty common in West and Central Africa
after that, in part because they were one of the
few livestock at the dreaded chets fly did not target
uh huh cool uh. The association with spirituality continued UM
(11:38):
eggs were used in religious ceremonies, the chicken itself was
the most commonly sacrificed animal. Um chickens grew to become
a pretty common ingredient in West African cuisine, and it
wasn't long before fried chicken pieces started showing up in
homes markets if we look at Europe, one of the
first written recipes of Western typically thought of as quote
(12:00):
American style fried chicken appeared in at seven British cookbook
written by handle Glass titled of Cookery Made Plain and Easy,
Plain and Easy, I Love Cookery. The recipe called for
coating pieces of chicken and flour and frying it in
hog's lard. This was already the preferred method of the Scottish,
(12:24):
as opposed to the English, who pretty much just boiled
or baked it. The Scottish are also thought to be
the first Europeans to fried chicken. That they differed from
West African take because they didn't use any spices in
the battery they put on the chicken. Okay, and the
recipe was called quote to Marinate Chicken Simple to the point,
(12:44):
and the book itself was a hit in both Europe
and the United States. Battered fried chicken recipes meanwhile, started
popping up around the late eighteen thirties in Southern American cookbooks, right,
and the term Southern fried chicken didn't pop up and
writing until But fried chicken in the South had a
(13:06):
long history before that. And there are a couple of
boys fried chicken may have become this Southern thing. And
here we come to food's just patented food sadness part
of the episode. Yes, welcome to be depressed about a
food that you love. You knew it was coming. So
the arrival of West African slaves to the South is
(13:28):
one way Southern fried chicken could have originated. Uh, slaves
were allowed to keep chickens, which is unusual. They usually
they generally were not allowed to possess farm animals or
anything really. And the reason they were allowed to keep
chickens is because, um, they could serve as an alarm
(13:52):
and also white people just didn't want them. Yeah, it
was the food, So it was the food source that
white people didn't care about exactly. Slaves could in some
cases raise these chickens and possibly sell them to their
owners or other slave owners. According to the World of
(14:13):
a Slave Encyclopedia of the material life of slaves in
the United States. There are records dating back to the
seventeen thirties of travelers mentioning and writing that slaves were
selling chicken in Carolina Low Country. They raising and selling
of chickens was one of the only ways for African
Americans to accumulate any money or items like other other
(14:34):
material not not wealth but stuff basics, And the chicken
business was pretty much run by black people, and thus
it was associated with black people, and the cooking of
chicken was in particular associated with black women because they
were the ones who usually do um and black women
(14:56):
would sometimes sell their cooked off and fried chicken at
train stations. There are records of describing black women waiter
carriers who served fried chicken to white passengers on trains,
and in some cases, black female slaves left left recipes behind,
including in Abbey fishers book What Miss Fisher Knows about
(15:21):
Old Southern Cooking, which is thought to be the first
cookbook published by an African American. Aside from being just
an amazing title, I know for a cookbook, I've I've
enjoyed all the titles of cookbooks so far. Yeah, not
a whole lot of duds and you knew we couldn't
do this episode without talking about awful stereo time. Okay,
(15:43):
here we go. Because fried chicken was so closely associated
with black people, even though they themselves didn't eat that
much of it, because the ingredients outside of the chicken
at the time where Yeah, getting that much cooking oil
was expensive, even though it is a rather economical use
for cooking oil, assuming that you don't burn the oil,
you can reuse it. But you also need the flower.
(16:05):
But you need the flower, you need the spices you're using.
Spices are very pricey. Um. And white people used it
as an excuse to say and write and draw terrible things,
really terrible things. Yeah, really awful. Good job. History, black
people were negatively depicted as chicken thieves primarily, but also
chicken fryers and eaters, and this continued into the nineteenth
(16:28):
century as another way to keep newly freed slaves from integrating,
and the stereotype is still around to this day. It
is because people could could really stand to do better. Yeah,
they could. I myself went to an event not at
my the university I attended, but at different university. I
(16:50):
won't name it, but they it was Black History Month
and they were serving like fried chicken and great crater, right,
what is it? It's great cool, a oh great cool
and watermelon. And I was like, this is not a thing,
this is not I want to be participated. I need
to go somewhere else right now. And another interesting note, um,
(17:11):
West African slaves also brought with them the chickens association
with spirituality, and it's not uncommon to find piles of
chicken bones which can remains buried around plantations in ways
that hearkened back to those spiritual traditions. And kind of
from this, the chicken was christened the preachers bird infots,
(17:32):
that was what it was called. And Um, the chicken
in some form or another was frequently served at Sunday
family get together so celebrations, in part because it was
easy to transport. Uh. And to this day, I frequently
see chicken dinners um or bunches on Sundays, usually served
communal style. It's pretty certainly common around Atlanta. So that's
(17:55):
one way fried chicken in the South might have become
kind of synonymous. Another way has to do with Scotland
an accident. I'm not even gonna oh me me neither
not today, I'm unprepared. Yeah, that's that's a whole weeks. Yeah,
you need to bring in a coach. We should have
(18:16):
invested in that. But yeah, Scotland because as as we
said above, Um, the Scottish may have been the first
Europeans who are frying chicken um in a vaguely similar
way to the West African tradition, although fewer spices in
the in the breading and um. And they may have
when when Scottish immigrants arrived in the American South, they
may have brought their recipes for frying chicken along with them. Um.
(18:40):
But hey, another depressing note. Fried chicken also had its
cultural stigma in Scotland. Back back home, it was associated
with poor people who could not afford bee for pork.
You know, when I was first researching this, um, there
was a lot of uh like search was that were
(19:00):
who buck chicken? Fried chicken to the South? Was Scottish
immigrants or West African slaves? And I was curious about
if it was Scottish immigrants, why was it the South?
And then a lot of people are saying, and I
have heard this that the thieves and less word for
(19:21):
that desirables I mean, I'm not saying it. Saying it. Yeah, yeah,
went to the South. And I know I have a
friend whom she claims that her family was sent to
the South for stealing chickens in Scotland. Yeah, it's like, oh,
(19:42):
that's fascinating. Yeah. So I wasn't able to find too
much truth in that. I also didn't have much time
to spend on it because I feel like a lot
of these episodes they lead into all these pasts and
I'm like, no, I want to learn everything about the
chicken being divined, and like, chi, we can do another
episode about divine in chickens. Some well known Southerners also
(20:03):
helped popular popularized fried chicken as as like a general
pop culture thing, right, And one of the first mentions
of fried chicken in the US came from the seventeen
hundreds diary. And I find this adorable that he wrote
about it in his Diary of a Governor of the
Virginia Colony, William Bird Bird joke. Oh sorry, I didn't.
(20:28):
I didn't have a good one. I just wanted to
say it. No, I understand. In eighteen four, Martha Rudolph,
who was related in law to Thomas Jefferson published a
popular cookbook with a nearly identical fried chicken recipe to
handed glasses aforementioned Wrisby called The Virginia Housewife. So so
(20:48):
it was the thing that was going around. It was,
and it was popular, especially on Sundays. Is like the
fancy dinner, especially in the upper class of the South.
And then around eight seventy eight, the first written instance
of Maryland fried chicken, which is something I had never
heard of before. It's fried chicken served with us with
(21:09):
like a gravy. It's it's a gravy type thing, chicken gravy. Okay.
It appeared on a menu in Saratoga, New York's Grand
Union Hotel. Mm hmm. And that's generally what we think
is why Southern fried chicken is a thing, why fried
chicken is associated with the South. And that brings us
(21:31):
to the next step in fried chickens timeline. But first
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
we're back, Thank you so much, sponsor. Uh so yeah,
still more history, right, fast food chains? How How did
(21:54):
how did this? How did this happen? It happened with
as with many things advancing in technology, because fried uh
fast food. Chicken fried or otherwise was not really a
thing we could do until chicken farming technology improved, making
chicken farming easier cheaper, and that made fried chicken less
(22:19):
of a special Sunday meal two more of a something
that could be enjoyed cheaply, relatively quickly, and more. It
just occurred to me that that all this like improvement
technology is improved, certainly improvement for us, it's probably definitely
not improvement for the chickens, and it's probably led to
the really terrible conditions the chickens are kept in these days,
(22:41):
which I guess we should spend a depressing episode talking about,
but that's not this episode. That's a later date. All
these advancements did not immediately equal fast food. It still
took about twenty minutes to fry some chicken, which that yeah,
that would not fly out. No, not none of fast
(23:02):
no standards like more than thirty two seconds. But with
some innovation, methods of frying large amounts of chicken and
keeping the fried chicken pieces warm and crisp were invented.
And one of these fried chicken innovators was Colonel halland Sanders.
Holland sand does he say yeah, so, Colonel Colonel Sanders, um,
(23:24):
the actual Colonel Sanders. He started franchising Kentucky Kentucky Fried
Chicken in the nineties, and that success led to the
introduction of a bunch of other fried fried chicken fast
food places Harald's Chicken, Check Churches, Popeye, Bojangles, Chick fil
a Um. In fact, one of the founders of Bojangles,
(23:45):
Richard Thomas, started out owning and operating KFC franchises and
would eventually become the president of operations for the entire chain. Interesting, however,
this this boom of fried Chicken in the nine sixties
following KFC, could not be maintained. And um, all these strange, little, little,
(24:06):
little small regional franchises, a lot of them had a
pop star eat either a black or white pop star
lend their name to them, Minnie Pearl, James Brown, Mahalia Jackson, um.
But all of these franchises would kind of boom and
then bust by the nineteen seventies. M hm did not know.
That kind of reminds me of Gladys Knights Chicken Wabbles.
(24:29):
Oh yeah, that one too. Oh I know I was
missing one. That's Georgia Laurence. I'm sorry, Gladys, I didn't.
We're going to get a letter in the middle. We
got to talk about Colonel Sanders. Oh yeah, he was.
He was a really fascinating human person. And in case
(24:50):
anyone doesn't know this, I feel like a lot of
people do. He was a Kentucky colonel, not like a
actual Army colonel. Totally separate thing. Yes, very different. Uh.
In his early life he was a lawyer before he
got into a fight with his old client in the courtroom,
so end of career there. He was involved in a
(25:13):
shootout with a competitor of his first restaurant after the
competitor repainted a gas station sign advertising for Colonel Sanders
restaurant to redirect traffic to the competitor's restaurant. And I
was a shootout situation. He was like, what should happen now?
Is a shootout? Okay? The competitor hit the guy Sanders
(25:37):
was with who was Sanders boss, uh and killed him
and was convicted of murder. Goodness and Sanders remained the
symbol and spokesperson for KFC even after he sold it
in nineteen sixty four, and he would do spot checks
at KFC's around the country and if he found the
food lacking, he'd tell the owner of the KFC he
(26:01):
was visiting something along the lines of the food was
quote god slop. And he went on to soothe the
then parent company of KFC who Blind Incorporated um over
misuse of his likeness and selling stuff that he didn't
have our want to have any part of. He also
(26:24):
really did not like that they moved the headquarters out
of Kentucky. Really made it mad. Yeah, well it's not
Kentucky Fried Chicken anymore at that point, who Bline Inc.
Countersued in nineteen alleging libel after Sanders publicly described KFCs
gravy as quote sludge with a quote wallpaper taste and
(26:49):
that it quote ain't fit for my dogs. Who I
lost the case. Man Sanders was sued again by who
Blind after he and his wife reopened to their Shelby
Thelle location restaurant under the name Claudia Sanders Dinner House,
which you can still visit to this day, and they
were talking about the possibility of franchising at KFC tends
(27:11):
the suit Blinds like no way. Sanders settled. Uh, and
he's just such an interesting character. He's often used as
like an example of a small businessman who really struggled
and then succeeded, because apparently he was always on the
brink of total destitution. Um. And I want to thank
(27:31):
Stuff you should know for turning me onto this. Those
are those are pretty okay, guys. Yeah yeah, if you guys,
you guys don't listen to stuff you should know, Probably
every single one of you does. But yeah, that's probably
why you're here right now. And KFC is hugely popular
outside of the US. It's familiarized people the world over
with American style ish fried chickens. And as someone who
(27:54):
travels a lot the fast food chains, I generally see
the most of our KFC and Subway and what I
call stealthy McDonald's. Stealthy McDonald's. Yeah, they're like made to
look really fancy and okay, they don't have the yellow arches.
Weird go and it's totally McDonald's. How strange. Um uh uh.
(28:16):
It should be mentioned here that other than the founder
of Harold's Chicken Shack, who is Harold Pierce, all of
the entrepreneurs who opened the surviving fried chicken franchises were
white dudes, which you know, it's not unexpected, but perhaps
strange is that an okay word for it? Strange being
(28:37):
that it's this food associated with black women specifically, And yeah, sure, um,
but there is a story about one of the failed
chains from the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies
that is really strangely hopeful. Um. It's the one that
Mahalia Jackson lent her name to. And Jackson, if you're unfamiliar,
was a gospel singer and activist who moved to Chicago
(29:00):
from the South and worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Um.
The restaurants in her name were owned and operated entirely
by black people and and really provided opportunities in their communities.
The chain's co founder, Benjamin Hooks, was a lawyer and
eventually a judge who would go on to lead the
Double A c P for for like a couple of decades. Almost. Um.
(29:23):
There's a really really beautiful piece about all of this
in Gravy, which is the magazine of the Southern Food
Ways Alliance, which is all around awesome. Um. Gravy is
also a podcast, by the way, if you haven't listened
to it, go check that out because they do amazing
stories all the time. Yeah, the availability and popularity of
fried chicken at fast food restaurants burned all of these
(29:46):
new takes on fried chicken, especially when it comes to
hearing it was something you wouldn't traditionally bear with, like
sweet waffles, chicken and waffles, or champagne. Yes, I know
we've said it before, We'll stand again. Also, this was
in the article I was reading, So it's not just us.
It's not just us red hot chicken that's like crazy
(30:07):
popular right now. Yeah. Yeah, or or Nashville style, which
I still don't think is technically a thing, but in Nashville,
but it's it's delicious. There's North Carolina style, and then
all kinds of international flavors that are getting popularity here
in the United States. I okay, look y'all. I started
delving into all of the health hubbub surrounding fried foods
(30:29):
so that we could do a health section in this
in this our podcast episode. Um, but it's it's really
going to need to be its own episode. Uh. There's
so much debate and research going into how different types
of oils react to different cooking temperatures and and what compounds.
They then release I in a brief summary way can
(30:49):
tell you like basically, don't don't eat hell of fried
foods all the time, but also don't stress out about it.
This reminds me of in high school. I had to
come up with the diet. It was part of our
health class, and my diet was I don't remember what
I called it, but the slogan was in moderation our
(31:11):
face obliteration, and I was clever that way. Essentially, that's
what we say and a lot of these things. Yeah, yeah,
like fat isn't terrible. Yeah, just just go easy, you know, ye,
moderate yourself. Um, but if you're choosing for you know,
today to not be the day that you're moderating yourself,
We've got a few tips for you on how to
(31:34):
best do that at home. But first we're gonna take
one more break for a quick word from our sponsor
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So some tips for
cooking at home, which I am delighted that Lauren wrote,
(31:57):
even though she's never done it. There are lots of
fashionals out there who have written really good things about it.
I totally I don't believe you, and they all check
out from the science point of view. Okay, okay, okay, no,
I want I want to get your perspective on it. Okay,
here we go. Tell me, tell me if I'm leading people. Okay,
(32:21):
First of all, you're gonna want a cast iron skillet
or perhaps a Dutch oven, because the iron in either
of those kind of objects is going to keep its
temperature better than other materials like like aluminum or something
like that. Right, yeah, and that temperature. Yes, you're also
going to want to use a probe thermometer to keep
the oil at the correct temperature. M That is true.
(32:41):
I've always just put flour in there. Oh yeah, how
do how does that work? If it's sizzles, then it's
that it's the right temperature. Yeah, like sizzles and makes
this little little dot doball. Next, I mean, perhaps, obviously,
use the best quality chicken that you can find and
or afford, you know, check the ingredients label for things
other than sicken. Yeah, which sounds obvious, But some packaged
(33:02):
meats have flavor added, which generally is not a good sign. Um. However,
I mean, don't feel bad if that's what you've got
to work with. Eat food. Food is great, Um, You're
also going to want to get yourself some neutral flavored
oil like canola to um to to to use for frying.
I mean, I wouldn't not suggest lard, but I've heard
(33:23):
chrisco is a is a popular one. But um, but
you know, uh yeah, neutral flavored so that the natural
chicken flavors really come through through. Yeah, especially if you've
got the good chicken exactly. Yeah. Especially then A step
that I have seen a proposed strongly is to brine
the chicken overnight. Is this an important one? Okay, she's
(33:47):
oh or the schools of thought, there are schools of
oh goodness. It also comes up when it comes to turkey. Yeah, okay,
well okay, Uh. The the proponents that I've seen brining say,
you know, basically, brining will make the finished product juicier
and more tender because the meat absorbs some of that
(34:09):
that salty liquid um and salt um de Nature's protein proteins,
you know, are big folded up messes of molecules, like
like necklaces that have somehow merged while sitting in your
jewelry box, or um, like a bit of straying after
your your cat or your child has gotten to it
um and salt relaxes some proteins, which makes muscle fibers
(34:30):
less tough, and let's water molecules move in and hang out,
meaning that the cooked meat will have more moisture and
and be more tender. Oh man, the face, the face
that Annie is making at me is real doubtful though, No, no, no, no,
I actually think that this is um. The pendulum is
swinging towards this side of the argument that brining is
(34:54):
the way to go, and it does really help. I
personally never do it because I don't have to. Everybody's
typing away. It doesn't take along any well, I mean
to be fair to to make a brine, it does
take a little bit of time because you're for for
a good basic Brian, You're gonna take like four cups
of water, a half a cup of sugar for for chicken.
(35:15):
I've heard sugar is a good addition um, and about
a fourth cup of salt. You bring it all to
a boil and stir so that it dissolves, then allowed
to cool completely before you put your chicken in it
um and then let it soak overnight for like twelve
hours at least in the fridge and so that's so,
that's like a that is a whole process. Yeah. Usually
(35:37):
when I'm making fried chicken, I'm making it so fast
before I can convince myself that I really should be
eating something healthier. I don't eat any time for me
to change my mind. I do believe I've should do it.
Brining tastes. I think that it probably taste test. Yeah,
here's our taste test of the episode. Okay, alright, more advice.
(36:00):
If you're dredging it in buttermilk before you apply the
breading flour coating UM, then then use a really thin dridge.
I don't know. That's the thing I read. I will
believe that is also something I don't do. I have
done it again when I have like more time. My mom. Okay,
(36:20):
my mom does it, and it does. It's good when
you're when you're frying um. The amount of oil that
you should put in the pan is about like half
to three quarters of an inch, which is like one
point three to one point nine, and the oil temperature
should be three five degrees fahrenheit a k A hundred
and sixty three degrees celsius if you're measuring it. My
(36:40):
mom her number one tip when I first tried to
make fried chicken on my own, was that make sure
it's hot enough and don't overcrowd the pan. Yeah, oh
that's yeah, that's that's definitely a thing that I read about.
You should cook in batches, that you don't overcrowd the
pan because doing so brings down the temperature of the
oil more than you want, which will lead to that
(37:01):
to that greasy chicken that the steam action that I
mentioned at the top of the show won't be able
to do its thing. Oh yeah, no, greasy chicken, don't
do it. Um. And then that you should serve it
immediately or transfer it to an oven like just below
boiling point, like like two degrees fahrenheits something like that,
like nine degrees Elsie's. They're about um to keep it
(37:24):
warm and crisp. This is a much fancier way of
doing it than me. And I don't mean that in
a bad way at all. That because fried chicken, like
I said, it's one of my favorite things. Yeah, so
I wonder if I did this, if there would be
a whole another world of like or maybe maybe they're
both equally delicious. Yeah, I mean, at the end of
(37:45):
the day, you're frying something that's tasty and then you're
eating it. Uh. And I think that that just about
wraps up everything that we have to say about fried chicken.
But let us turn for a moment to some listener mail.
Y'all you all right stuff and it's great. Yeah, we
love it. So Veronica wrote in to say, first and foremost,
(38:06):
I absolutely love your podcast, especially the puns. Yes, thank you,
Thank you, Veronica. Okay, back to Varonca. I'm from San Antonio, Texas,
and I remember the Nighthawk frozen dinners. They came in
a boring brown box and we're not superhero worthy at all.
I had no idea they were Texas based, but I
remember eating the mini frozen dinners at Grandma's house. I
(38:27):
even remember eating the half frozen steak. We didn't have
a great microwave and soggy tater tots. I can't believe
I liked those, but he definitely brought up a nice
childhood memory. I look forward to your next episode. Thank you, Nic,
it's wonderful. I was so ah van those those nighthawks. Yeah,
you're bad. We don't live up to the superhero standard.
(38:49):
Guy Bird elevated herself to hero status in my book
by sending in this. She wrote in the Unsweetened History
and Tech of Sugar, and he mentioned trying a dessert
called peanut butter ice gravel and searching for it again
for years. Yes, I did, back the sky Bird, Well,
look no further. Yes, it is called bingsha, which does
(39:11):
translate to ice sand, but it's really a cross between
a smoothie and a frap. Note the Chinese do call
sugar sha tongue with the first character often referring to gravel,
but a better translation for the term is granulated sugar mhm.
And the recipe is as followed. She sent a recipe.
(39:32):
I was so happy, I like, I jumped out of
my chair to your table. Spoons, peanut butter, one cup ice,
one tablespoon white sugar, half a cup fresh milk, condensed
milk to taste. Throw it all in a blender and
blend until the ice crystals disappear. So easy, Back to
sky Bird. There's really not actually that much sugar in
this dessert, so enjoy it to your heart's content. I
(39:54):
do recommend looking for this dessert in Hong Kong or
Taiwan restaurants because their restaurant versions are giant and extravagant.
I will enjoy this to my heart's content. Thank you,
thank you, thank you sky Bird for sending you this. Oh,
we should do a video. We should do a little
a little video for social Oh it's gonna bring back
so many memories of my time in China. I can't
(40:16):
wait to taste it. Also, congrats to Amanda and Elizabeth
who answered the pizza bonus call. When it comes to yogurt,
that was actually something we talked about in our Frozen
Food episode because of the way recording and publishing schedules
work very bizarre. But they both sent two different recipes
for pizza involving yogurt, which is oh, man, yeah, it's
(40:40):
both in the dough like, oh, that sounds great. Yeah,
I know. I was like, how could how could this
have alluded us? Thank you? Thank you both. If you
would like to email us recipes or ideas or anything else,
we have an email address at food step at how
(41:00):
stuff works dot com. Yes, we also have a couple
of social media accounts. You can find us on Twitter.
Our address there is at food stuff hs W stands
for how Stuff Works. The company that owns us We're
also on Instagram, are handled there is just at food stuff.
We hope to hear from you, because hearing from you
so far has been extremely lovely. It really is um
(41:22):
and you will hear from us again sometime soon. We
hope that many more good things in the meanwhile are
coming your way
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Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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