December 27, 2022 • 52 mins
Fried chicken is Chuck’s favorite food, and Josh sure doesn’t dislike it. It is with this appreciation that SYSK plunges into the hot grease of fried chicken history – and there’s a lot to it!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, in spirit, and
that makes this Stuff you Should Know Chuck's Favorite Food edition. Yeah,
(00:24):
my favorite food this is I don't blame you, Chuck,
like I love fried chicken, but I love it even
more after researching this, I've just got this whole must
have attitude. And I think that that brings up an
important point that we should lead with, which is, if
you are vegan, you should probably skip this episode because
you're not going to be vegan by the end of it.
I'll tell you that much. Yeah. You know, people ask
(00:47):
the favorite food question. You get that a lot in
your life, and I guess I sort of went back
and forth over the years with different things. But it's
fried chicken. It is fried chicken. Okay, Well, then are
you are I'm guessing something of an expert for Atlanta
fried chicken, best fried chicken in Atlanta. Oh man, Sorry
(01:08):
to put you on the spot. Do you want to
come back to it at the end of the episode. Well, no,
I was afraid you would ask me, what, like, what
my favorite of all time? Was there something? Um, that's
really hard because because there's so many kind of small variations,
and I love fried chicken so much. I love so
many different kinds that I don't know that I could
say that I've ever had it, like put down my
(01:30):
fork and me like, are my fingers really and said,
this is hands down, like the best fried chicken I've
ever had. I've said this is some of the best
fried chicken I've ever had a lot, but I will
say this, and it is a little controversial if you
live in the South to take a grocery store allegiance
like this. But Publix is known for their fried chicken.
(01:51):
I don't like it. I like I like Croger's fried
chicken better, much better. I've never had Kroger's fried chicken.
But I don't like public Is fried chicken either. It's
not good. It's too bready for me. And I don't
know if it's my local Publics, but it always tastes
like it's like the oil is old acrid. Yeah, man,
it's just doesn't do it. I love Kroger's fried chicken.
(02:14):
I'm a big fan of minimal breading. Let that chicken
skin shine and uh, sort of a dry fry is
more my my jam. I have had the experience of
putting my fork down, actually my fingers down and saying
like that was the best fried chicken I've ever had.
(02:36):
It was, um remember that that restaurant indicator Watershed. Oh sure.
So the head chef was Scott Peacock and he and
his mentor Edna Lewis came up with this fried chicken
recipe that they used to serve it at Watershed. It
was I mean, I've never had anything even approaching it,
(02:57):
and I've had really good fried chicken too, I would
say second probably Colonnade over on chester Bridge really good,
but this was it was just an entirely different level.
And you can find the recipe online really easily, and
it's pretty, it's pretty hashtag basic, but something about it
all comes together and makes it just just astoundingly good.
(03:19):
It's so good. Yeah, it's just so good, Chuck. I
think Emily Sailors from Indigo Girls was co owner or
owner of Watershed for a while, may still be. I
don't know, No, she sold it, okay, I think yeah,
And they moved and Scott Peacock moved on and everything
it was it was like the Beatles for a second.
I am also going to carry out this and shout
(03:40):
out my grandmother Bryant Opeal. Bryant's fright chicken was really
my favorite. I haven't had it, you know. She died
at the age of a hundred and one, uh, about
eight years ago, but she hadn't been cooking for a
while either, So it's been since I was probably in
my twenties since I had opals uh, and hers was
(04:03):
And I'm a big fan of this preparation, not deep
fried or pressure fried, but skillet fried, which is when
you have a cast iron skillet and you're you know,
you're flipping the chicken. You're letting it fry and flipping
the chicken because it's not completely covered in oil. And
she also used just whatever grease was in the big
(04:24):
jar on her stovetop. She would just throw all the
grease in there from everything she ever cooked, and it
would harden or you know, uh, congeal into this lardie
jar of goodness. So she would just kind of just
slop whatever that was. Um, so it's probably some bacon
grease in there, not probably most definitely country ham stuff.
(04:45):
That was all kinds of of meaty congealed fat in there.
Yeah it sounds good. Her stuff was so good. So um. Yeah,
So we're talking fried chicken. We could just keep doing
this if you want. I know, we should start food
show maybe when we eventually retire. If we start a
food show, we're naming it Opal Bryant's Fried Chicken, Okay, okay,
(05:08):
or if we ever open a restaurant, that will be
the name. So yeah, we'll do a food show sometime sometime.
This will be one of those things where we can
be like and our fried chicken episode that we did
years back was really good too. This is gonna be
like that kind of episode. So we're talking fried chicken,
and it's one of those things where everyone associates the
dish with the American South, and for good reason, that's
(05:31):
kind of where it it caught its um. It was
established in the way that we understand it today, which
is from what I can tell bone in chicken pieces,
breaded and fried in oil, and that is fried chicken.
That's American Southern American fried chicken. That's what purists will
tell you. Anything different is is not technically fried chicken.
(05:54):
But the American South is kind of where it got
its start, but it dates back even further further than that,
and even weirder, it seems like it might have come
from a specific place in Europe originally too. Yeah, Scotland,
if you can believe that there are appearances, I mean,
people would be being people have been eating chickens for
(06:16):
a long time. Uh. You can find recipes in books
from the eighteenth century for fried chicken. Uh. Those one
in seventeen thirty six. There was one in seventeen forty
seven where it's you know, clearly dipped in flour, fried
in some kind of lard. But it seemed like the
Scots are the ones who started frying it. And I
(06:37):
looked up this up in a lot of places and
kind of saw the same thing. Uh. You know, the
Brits didn't really care that much about eating things that
tasted good, so they would boil or bake their chicken.
That baked chicken could be good, but boiled chicken can
never be good. Uh. And the Scots said, no, we'll
flay it, and so they started frying it up in lard.
(06:59):
And we're really onto something, as it turned out. Yeah,
And the reason why at least one food is Storian is.
This is their theory. But the reason why it kind
of has legs is that a lot of the Scots
and Scott's Irish um colonists who came to the United States, um,
(07:19):
they owned slaves, enslaved people, and they think that the
Scots taught their slaves to cook this for them, and
that's where the origination of um black American Southerners having
this um like being the kind of the place where
fried chicken originated. That's where they think that it probably
(07:41):
came from Scotland. Yeah, And I mean, I think what
we can say for sure is that's where it was perfected.
Were these enslaved women, Uh they spiced it in such
a way because Scotland and in the UK, like, they're
not known for their for their they're doing much better now,
but they weren't known for the most flavorful um spiced food.
(08:04):
So it was even though they were frying chicken, it
was it was known as a little more bland until
they got to the American South and these women started
spicing it right, and that's where it became this this
really really scrumptious and delicious food that we know today
brought over from Scotland, but perfected in the American South. Yeah,
(08:24):
I think the theory, the other theory that was, you know,
long held is that it was brought over by um
West African slaves to America. Um, but I think people
have done investigations around West Africa and there isn't a
fried chicken dish that. Um. They would fry their chicken
lightly over there, but then they would braise it for
the rest of the time. And I think the Brits
(08:45):
would do that too. Um, you know, it isn't the same,
so they actually do think it kind of came from Scotland,
but yes, perfected by um enslaved cook women in the
American South. And there's mentions of it too, I think,
dating back to the seventeenth cent so it is an
all American dish for sure. Yeah, it was. Um, it
was a dish that was a little more of a
(09:06):
treat at the time, at least preceding the Civil War. Uh.
It was very labor intensive to get these chickens and
to pluck the chickens and prepare them and cut them up.
And it wasn't like just like throwing a whole plucked
chicken into a pot kind of thing. Uh. There was
no air conditioning obviously, so like you know, laboring over
a hot stove all day in hot grease. It was
(09:27):
just a lot to undertake. So it was a little
more of a of a fancy meal to have, um,
like on the fourth of July maybe or a big
like birthday celebration. And even though uh, these women, these
enslaved women were perfecting this dish, Uh, they their family
wasn't really allowed to eat it that much until they
(09:48):
were able to raise their own chickens. Um. There were
laws or I don't know about laws per se, but
um and slay people weren't allowed to own cattle. They
weren't allowed to own pigs, but chickens were sort of
seen as not very significant enough to restrict at the time.
So they let enslave people you know, own and raise chickens. Uh,
(10:08):
some of which they would actually at the plantation buy
from them to eat. Yeah. I think Monicello bought um
their chickens from their enslaved people working there. Yeah, I
think you're right. So, um, there was a up shot,
or there was an upside of the black women that
were cooking this under duress at the time, who learned
(10:30):
to perfect this dish. Was that after um emancipation, when
the Jim Crow South started, they were a lot of
them were able to support themselves by selling fried chicken
because they were the only ones who knew how to
make it correctly. And so there were there There was
a UM, a woman, American studies scholar named Psyche Williams Forsen,
(10:54):
who wrote a book basically so this chicken made this
house or this house was made by chicken. Yeah, was
called Building Houses out of Chicken Legs. Col Black Women,
Food and Power. Uh. And I do want to shout
her out too, because she has a new book out
this year that looks great. It seems like she really
explores um sort of the diaspora and how that affected
(11:16):
foods that Black people ended up eating sort of around
the world, especially in America. Uh. And there's a new
one called Eating While Black, Food, Shaming and Race in
America that just came out this year. And I saw
a couple of interviews whetherr She's just it's amazing stuff
that she's writing right on. So one of the things
UM that she explored where these um women called waiter
(11:38):
carriers who would show up along the tracks at railroad stops, um,
you know, and this was a time like when railroads
had really just kind of started up, and you couldn't
really get food anywhere on these cars. Dining cars hadn't
been invented yet. So these um, the these black women
who were called waiter carriers would show up with pies
(12:00):
or coffee or fresh picked berries or fried chicken and
would sell them like hand them to the customers on
the train through the windows. I think they sold chicken
breasts for like twenty five cents apiece and other like
like drumsticks and thighs for I think five cents apiece
something like that. And there's a specific town called Gordonsville, Virginia,
(12:21):
which became known as the chicken fried chicken capital of
the world. And apparently some people would go out of
their way to stop in Gordonsville, Virginia on their train
journey so that they could buy the fried chicken there. Yeah,
it was. It was a regional hub in Gordonsville at
the time. And they still have a pretty robust fried
(12:43):
chicken festival, I think in October. I think we missed
it this year, but I saw them refer to themselves
as the chicken leg Center of the Universe, which is
another fun name. But we should also point out while
this great sort of entrepreneurial spirit was being weren't after emancipation,
a lot of these women were also harassed and robbed
(13:05):
and things like that. So you know, they were they
were doing the best they could to make a living,
but it's still wasn't as above board as it should
have been. Of course, got so um they were eventually, um,
I guess outlawed by proxy after America started developing like
food safety laws. They're like, you can't do that anymore.
We're gonna start regulating vendors. And then also dining cars
(13:27):
came along and that really kind of did that. That
was the death and all of it. Forget this amazing
fried chicken being handed to you through a window for
a quarter. Come et in the dining car. We're featuring
British boiled checking for dinner tonight. It's probably right. So, um,
you said something about how these women were robbed and exploited,
and you know, there's a there's a through line through
(13:49):
a lot of American history where um, a lot of
black culture um gets kind of taken over by white culture,
and that the transfer is lost to history or erased
or blurred, or people just ignore it. So fried chicken
is actually one of those um things. Because if you ask,
like a lot of Americans on the street who invented
(14:10):
fried chicken, I would guess a significant portion of them
are going to identify Colonel Sanders as the person who did.
And he definitely did not. He wasn't even the first
fried chicken restaurant tour, but he was part of a
tradition where while he wasn't stealing directly from the labor
the intellectual proper you could say, of um, black women. Um,
(14:34):
he definitely benefited from it big time. There were people
who were just directly exploiting it. And there was a
restaurant chain in Salt Lake City that was open in
ve chuck. Yeah, this is one of you know, sort
of the shameful parts of our racism in America. This
is in the nineteen twenties. Uh, And it was you know,
(14:55):
it was just a time when you had like straight
up racist iconography on mainstream restaurant chains. Uh. And that
was the case with the coon Chicken in had racist
character caricatures on the logo. And it was in birth
of a nation. You know, it was like if it
makes an appearance in Birth of a Nation, that's like
(15:15):
the ultimate stamp of racism, of this sort of stereotype
of what this you know, this great food that was
invented by these enslaved people was then turned on them
and used against them as sort of a stereotype of
of whatever they wanted to say what they thought black
people were at the time, right, which was basically the
(15:37):
goal was to debase and demean black people so that
they wouldn't enjoy full citizenship, either politically, legally or culturally.
And it was we talked about it in our Watermelon
episode because I mean, like everybody loved watermelons and everybody
loved fried chicken, but the way that the white society
would point to it to kind of degrade black society was, well,
(15:59):
we all love it, but Black people really love it.
They're really crazy for watermelon, they're really crazy for fried chicken.
They'll do anything for it. And it just had this
kind of um, this this this purpose in this goal
and successfully of of demeaning, they making them seem less
of that even stuff that everybody enjoyed, they enjoyed it differently.
(16:19):
They were different. They were less somehow, and you know
that was apparently the fried chicken thing in particular was
was first sourced in Birth of a Nation. Alright, so
let's take a break and uh, let's talk about some
of the more fun parts of fried chicken. How about that? Okay?
And things stuck? Stuck. I don't know that you know
(16:54):
it stuck. And it's a great name. That's the name
of It's great with an X. Alright, so fried chicken. Well,
let's talk about chicken in general. Um, it wasn't really
the on the menu of every American who eats meat
(17:16):
like it is today. Chicken was was a distant third
to pork and beef for most of our history. Actually, um,
there's some stats here the National Chicken Council. It's pretty fun. Uh.
In nineteen sixty, Americans eight twenty eight pounds of chicken
per capita, and just a few years ago, in twenty nineteen,
that number was at ninety seven pounds, whereas red meat
(17:39):
went from one three to one twelve. So you know,
there there's been a big shift in um or a
shift in the kinds of meats that Americans eat. Uh.
And you know, chicken farming wasn't as big as beef
and pig farming for a long long time. It's sort
of a mom and pop thing, until they realized that
people really loved chicken, and we can fortify them with antibiotics,
(18:03):
and we can get those breasts unnaturally plump and get
build these huge barns to raise them in, and basically like, hey,
we can factory farm chickens just like we can cows
and pigs. Yeah, So that that really boosted chicken consumption.
And by the way, that nine pounds of chicken that
Americans eight in two thousand nine, I think it equaled
(18:24):
about eleven billion birds um. So the other thing that
happened in addition to cheap, widely available chicken UM were
new cooking techniques and the big cooking technique that really
turned fried chicken from something that took like up to
twenty minutes to cook correctly UM to something that you
(18:45):
could sell as fast food where it was just using
pressure cookers. So they would fry the chicken and a
pressure cooker and still people still do it today, and
the pressure would change, it would lower the boiling point
of the oil, so the oil could get hotter and
the chicken would cook faster. And if you did it right,
if you bredded it right, if you use the right
kind of breading, if you did you know, brine your
(19:07):
chicken and all that first, then you could cook this
stuff really fast and it would come out really good. Yeah.
So now Colonel Sanders comes into the picture. Uh. You
can't talk about fried chicken without talking about Harland Sanders. Uh.
And he got a sort of a late start as
far as his um chicken business goes. At the age
of forty was when he started serving chicken in front
(19:31):
of the service station he owned in Corbin, Kentucky. Then
opened up a cafe, Sanders Cafe across the street, serving
that skillet fried chicken that I love so much. And
then uh nine, so I guess he was forty nine
years old he finally develops this eleven secret eleven herbs
and spice recipe cooking in the pressure cooker. Uh. The
(19:53):
governor gave him his his his fake colonel ship. Uh
he was he was not an army man. The current
ship was bestowed upon him in an honorary fashion by
the governor of Kentucky. And that's when he started dressing
up like old Connell sandals and his white suit and
his bolow tie and his little white goatee, and and
(20:16):
a character was all of a sudden born. He became
more than a man. I read a little bit about him.
Apparently he had a he was known for two things,
had a really really really really foul mouth, and was
a bit handsy, shall we say. Yeah. They described him
as a having a insatiable sexual appetite. And because it
(20:38):
was you know, the nineteen thirties and forties, would kind
of come into a room and just be like, hey, hey,
who can I grab onto? Not kind of thing. Did
not know that part? Yeah, that was? That was That's
the legend. I have a Colonel Sanders story. Let's hear it.
I was driving down the road one day south Troy, Atlanta,
(21:01):
and I um was driving alongside a Buick and the
buick had a Vanity license plate which ties into our
license plate episode, by the way, and it said KFC
C O L. And in the back uh the I
don't I never know what that thing is called. But
the back panel behind the back seat, between that and
the window whatever that like the rear dashboard, I guess
(21:23):
there was a Colonel Sanders bobble head and they pulled
up closer and closer to the driver. I realized I
was looking at the man who played Colonel Sanders throughout
the eighties and nineties, and he, I swear to God,
was wearing a white suit and a black string tie
and he was driving down the road in the twenty
one century in America. Yeah, I think it said Bolo
(21:44):
ties that string tie. It's a little different. Okay, that's enough.
But he was the t D actor. Yes, he was
the the Yeah, Colonel Sanders was long dead by this time.
This is the guy who played Colonel Sanders in all
the ads for decades of I mean, I guess it
was him, like, you know, run him off the road
and interview him. But this is there's just no way
it wasn't him. It was him. I could tell you
(22:06):
by looking at him, and then you know the other
kind of evidence. The vanity plaint in the bottle really
kind of teared it for me. Uh My one favorite
thing that they've done recently in the past few years
is when they started casting all the different people to
play Colonel Sanders. Oh that was great, wasn't Amy Sadie? She?
(22:27):
I think she was. I know, I didn't see them all,
but I thought that was a pretty pretty clever little twist. So,
by the way, speaking of Amy Sadaris, this is gonna
come out long after this, but do you know um
Leslie Jordan's. Yeah, he just passed away yesterday. I'm super
super gutted about this. Yeah, he was like just this
great guy. If you knew him on Instagram, he was
(22:48):
really fun and funny and all that. But like favorite
Instagram accounts, some of the um some of the like
interviews that I'm seeing of him now, and one of
them was posted by Amy Sadaris where he's talking about
how like he wanted to live a life of serve
because you know, taking care of other people like brings
you out of yourself. And he was just this great guy.
Um And if you if you aren't familiar with him,
(23:08):
go look up his Instagram account. And I didn't realize
it at the time, but now I do that the
world like really lost somebody special. So r I p
um Leslie Jordan's. Yeah. I had seen him on like
Will and Grace and other stuff like that, but his
his Instagram account is where I just fell in love
with the guy. Yeah, for sure, Hey, hunker downers. He was.
He was great and I was very very sad to
(23:30):
learn about that because I was just like I was
watching him on Instagram like the day before, like hanging
putin thing. Dave Hill, Well I saw that too, and uh.
The other tribute is very good to read is making
milayles Is. She's doesn't post on the Instagram much, but
hers was very very sweet and sad. Yeah, alright, back
(23:50):
to the colonel. Yeah, sure. He sold the brand in
nine four for imagine a boatload of money, and it's
a part of Young Brands, one of those humongous, uh
nebulous sort of food corporations that owns lots of fast
food restaurants. And it went from Kentucky Fried Chicken officially
(24:13):
to KFC and apparently because the state of Kentucky said,
you know that there's a lot of brands using our name,
why don't we trademark the name Kentucky so we can
make a little money off this, And so KFC said,
we'll just go by KFC then yep, so um, which
is hilarious that Kentucky did that. I wonder how much
money they made from it. I don't know, or I
(24:34):
wonder if all the brands just he said, all right,
we're just k whatever. Right. It really harmed though, Kentucky
black Powder must get ink, I think the hardest at
any rate. Um, the I saw that when Colonel Sanders
sold Kentucky Fried Chicken in sixty four, he immediately started
(24:55):
trash talking it to open his own restaurant. They moved
to block and from doing that, he sued them for
like a hundred million dollars. They gave him like a
million dollars and let him open the restaurant in exchange
for him to stop talking trash about KFC from that
point on. Yeah, he was quite a character. And also
I mean like the fact that he was considered a
(25:15):
possible running mate for George Wallace, the pro segregationist presidential candidate.
The fact that he was kind of like, you know,
a throwback to the Annabellum South with his ties and
his accent and all that. A lot of people just
presume he was racist. Um. And when Papa John's um
had that scandal where Papa John himself like used that
(25:36):
racial slur um, he he tried to say, like Colonel
Sanders used to say that who cares? And apparently Colonel
Sanders family came out swinging and we're like. They called
Papa John a weasel and basically a scumbag and said
like our grandfather, a great grandfather or whoever, like who
did not use racial slurs. He attended black church sometimes
(25:59):
like he was not He was many things, but he
was not a racist. So you shut your mouth, Papa John,
and Uh, I guess it worked. Uh. Popeyes came along
to rival KFC is probably yeah, we're talking about friends
kids arrival. Uh. Popeyes was founded in s Popeyes without
an apostrophe. By the way, the joke was from founder
Alvin Copeland, Sr. That he was so poor he couldn't
(26:22):
afford the apostrophe, which is a great joke. But that
was a Louisiana chain opened in nineteen seventy two as
Chicken on the Run. Uh, people were like him. It
was really not so great, so he spiced it up
a little bit and went to a more New Orleans
style chicken and changed to Popeye is named after the
cartoon character No named after Popeye Doyle Gene Hackman's character
(26:47):
in the French Connection. Fact of the podcast. That's the
weirdest fact I could ever imagine. I mean that is
a that is a trivia question right there for sure.
Oh yeah, because you're setting people up because everyone's gonna
say it's Popeyes because they're now using him as the
logo like Popeye, that Gene Hackman and this little But
(27:07):
you'd have to word it just so because you'd spook
some people and be like, that's too easy a question.
It's really here. You'd have to word it just right. So.
But yeah, Copeland was He was a character as well. Um.
I didn't read that he was handy or anything like that. Um,
he raced speedboats. Uh, he loved spending money. He was
a propertly get spender and he was not at all
(27:28):
ashamed or embarrassed about it. Um. And one of the
things he was well known for in New Orleans was
his Christmas displays outside his home and they were so
elaborate they drew so many people that like like sheriff's
deputies had to direct traffic in the area around it
because people would just park and stop and go look
at him. So he was that kind of guy. And
I mean there's a special place in the universe for
(27:50):
people who spend, you know, freely on Christmas decorations. Outside
of their house so much so that it attracts like
local townsfolk who come in, like get the Christmas spirit
from that kind of thing. I think those are special
kind of people, agreed, I love it. Popeye's was eventually
bought out again by one of these conglomerates called Restaurant
(28:12):
Brands International. Really great creative name there. Uh. And you
know there are KFCs all over the world. Um, there
are KFC knockoffs all over the world. The SFC in Iran,
Superstar Fried Chicken and PFC Perfect Fried Chicken in London,
which I looked up to see how closely they were
(28:33):
ripping them off. And the PFC the font is definitely
the same font, but the logos and stuff look different. Okay,
Colonel Sanders has like blonde hair right. Speaking speaking of
Colonel sanders appearance, apparently KFC's most profitable nation is um China. Big. Yes,
(28:55):
the people in China since have gone berserk for Kentucky
Fried Chicken. Um. Again, it's more profitable in China than
in the US. Um the offerings are a little bit different. Um, Like,
there is fried chicken, but it's not the most popular
menu item they have. You know, like regional dishes as well,
and I think those are a little more popular. But
(29:16):
one of the reasons um I saw floated for why
uh Kentucky Fried Chickens so popular in China is that
Colonel Sanders vaguely resembles Confucious and that there's like an
affinity for him there. Oh wow, um it is double Uh.
It's the biggest most popular fast food in China, double
the size of McDonald's as far as a number of stores.
(29:39):
And I think when they were first built in the eighties,
it was a little bit of a luxurious thing where um,
there was more room, the restaurants were really clean, and
it was sort of contrasted with like street vendor food
as a place where you can go and take your
family that's a little nicer. Uh. And I did look
up the menu items. You know, they sell kanji and
egg tar. Uh. There's something called a dragon twister, which
(30:03):
I really there's there's a cool article where this food
writer went there and ate a bunch of stuff and
wrote about it. But the dragon twister sort of looks like, uh,
you know, when they'll take peeking duck and wrap it
in like a thin pancake, almost like a roll with
cucumber and spring onion and stuff. That's what the Dragon
Twister is, except it's, um, it looks like a like
(30:23):
a chicken uh not finger, Yeah, like a chicken finger. Right,
it's a chicken finger wrapped in a chicken breast, That's
what I'm guessing. No, it's that thin pancake, but it
does have the sweet bean sauce and cucumber and spring onion.
Look looks realiant I want one of those. If we
have any listeners in China, please mail us at right,
just drop ship it. And then also in Japan, KFC
(30:46):
is huge, not as huge as it is in China,
but it's become a national um Christmas tradition. Chaos the
traditional Christmas dinner in Japan. Not I think you told
me that before. I love that. Yeah, I think it
was in a Christmas episode once. Yeah, that's good stuff.
And then Korea, I believe they do not have well
(31:06):
they do have KFC, but they took the KFC methods
and turned it into something else, which is Korean fried chicken,
which apparently, um, if you if you like fried chicken,
you're going to like Korean fried chicken. And there's there's
no reason you have to choose. You can like them
both because they're so wildly different that there's no reason
to choose. Just just love it all. Yeah, I mean
(31:29):
they're not that different. It's it's it's still crunchy fried chicken,
but in Korea they double fry it. Uh, So they
fry it, well, they fry it once and then they
fry it again, so it's gonna be once, not twice,
but it's gonna be extra crunchy. Uh. And then they
have a you know, they're known for this sticky spicy
glaze that's on it. So like, Korean sticky fried chicken
(31:51):
is really really great. I love it. It's one of
my favorite preparations. Uh. A lot of people think that
when American troops were stationed there after the into the
Korean War, they may have introduced locals there and then
they built on that on their own to to sort
of make it their own. Which actually that might be true,
because apparently prior to American occupation, they would steam their chicken.
(32:13):
That's how they prepared it typically. Oh really, which is
the opposite of crunchy. It really is boiled. Yeah, I
don't know. I was wondering that too. Um, because I
knew the steam part was coming back when we were
talking about boiled chicken, and I wondered which is worse.
I think boiled is still worse. Yeah, And like when
your dog has an upset tummy, you give them boiled chicken. Oh,
(32:35):
I hadn't thought about that. White ricking can be good
if you're making like chicken salad. Yeah, all right, yeah,
I just forgot. I forgot about that. I was just
thinking of like throwing like whole chicken breasts and bones
and everything in a pot and boiling it. Well, that
sounds awful. Yeah, I mean, none of it is very
appealing to me. After you've had fried chicken, that crispy
(32:56):
brown goodness. Uh. That Korea is so good at they.
I think in the ninety seven Asian financial crisis, a
lot of people went into business for themselves, opened up
their own little mom and pops chicken, uh and a
beer and fried chicken is a very famous combo in
South Korea. Great combo and America too. Yeah. And I
(33:20):
think now there was a study UM in two thousand
nineteen that found there were eighties seven thousand fried chicken
restaurants in South Korea and that's three and a half
times the number of Kentucky fried chickens in the entire world.
That's that. Yeah. South Koreans love their fried chicken. But
what's interesting is that, um another survey found that they
(33:42):
don't actually consider it to be a Korean dish, even
though they put such a spin on it that everyone
outside of the world considers that particular kind of fried
chicken Korean fried chicken. Apparently in Korea, they South Korea
should say they don't. They don't consider that. No word
on what North Korea thinks about it. Uh. There there
there are some chains from Korea that are open now
(34:03):
in America, one of which I haven't tried yet, but
there is one in Atlanta, just have to drive a bit.
There's one called bon Chon where I think it's in Fayetteville,
which is things south of Atlanta. Somebody didn't do their
market research first. Uh. And then there's one called Mom's
Touch Chicken, which is just now arriving in America. Uh.
(34:27):
And I think we should take our last break now. Yeah. Yeah,
and we'll talk about some more variations on fried chicken,
because why not? And things stuck stuck. I don't know
(34:50):
that you know it's stuck and stuck. It's a great name.
That's the name of it. It's a great name. Alright,
stuck snet with in with an x so chuck when
we go to Nashville. Let's just go ahead and say it.
There's a really good chance we're going to do a
show in Nashville this year. I was just next Nashville
last weekend. Oh yeah, did you go to Prince's Barbecue
(35:15):
Chicken Check? No, I went to the Stevie Nicks concert,
but uh had a great time, And I was like,
Nashville just needs to be on my list because it's
it's drivable and like, it's a fun weekend and they've
got Hot Chicken. We have a year too, but they
it originated there. Yeah, hot chickens everywhere now. But yeah,
there is a guy named Thornton Prince the Third who
(35:36):
opened uh, Prince's Barbecue Chicken Check. I think they call
it Prince's Hot Chicken Check now, I believe. But essentially
every version of Hot Chicken that is out everywhere, from
KFC to Dave's Hot Chicken to all the little like
Hot Chicken operations that are just going crazy, and for
good reason. Hot chicken is really really good. Um it
(35:58):
all starred it in Hadley Park neighborhood of Nashville thanks
to Thornton Prince the Third. Yeah, I don't love hot chicken.
Um Oh, I love it, man. It's so greasy, nasty,
it's so good. It is. One reason is because I don't,
like I'm developing more of a tolerance for good heat
here in my fifties, because I've generally avoided heat. But
(36:21):
it depends on the kind of heat. Cayenne heat, which
is the heat that is generally made to for the
hot chicken is is one that kind of burns me
more than is satisfying to me. Uh and and and
it's trust me. It's fried chicken. Is one of the
reasons I am so out of shape. But hot chicken
is even worse because like they dunk it in in
(36:42):
hot oil after they fried it and just sort of
shake it out, so it is doubly bad for you. Yeah.
The thing about researching this chuck is I was like,
there's so much good fried chicken to eat that if
you just selective, if you're just choosy and you just
go to someplace like Princes where you just go to
like like the best Korean fried chicken place in your town. Um,
(37:06):
or you just you know, build a time machine and
go back and eat some of Opal Bryant's fried chicken.
Like you're not going to be able to eat it
all that often. It will become a delicacy, which I
think it should be treated as because it is really
really bad for you if it's done right, and then
if it's if it's done in any kind of way
that's approaching healthy, it's not being done right and it's
(37:26):
probably not that good. So yeah, it's really bad for you.
But I think if you just treat anything in moderation
like that, you can you can have it and enjoy it.
That's my problem. What moderation for fried chicken? I know
it problem. I treated as a regular just like this
is just what you eat. I was. I was raised
(37:46):
on fried chicken. I love it so much, but I
do I do need to in in theory, you would, uh,
you would enjoy it more and be like, hey, I
haven't had having my fried chicken for the month and
I'm really savorite and enjoy it. You don't even have
to do like that. You could just be like I
I want fried chicken but instead of like hopping on
over to Kroger and getting it at the drop of
a hat, if you make it so you have to
(38:08):
drive to like a really good place, they have it less. Probably.
I don't know how this ended up. This episode ended
up in me giving you health advice because I'm not
really the person you should be listening to about that.
But here we are. Uh, yeah, I know, it is
what it is. I'm working on it. It is what
it is. Man. Poio campero is something we had in Guatemala.
(38:29):
Uh and now they have those in the United States.
There's one of Buford Highway and that is fried chicken
with an adobo rub, which is delicious. Yeah. By the way, Chuck,
two things. I was such a dummy that when we
went to Guatemala with co ED, I thought, oh, the
American chain has infiltrated Guatemala. There's poyo compero here. I
didn't realize the opposite had happened, because it's been it
(38:51):
was around in Guatemala starting in nine. And then secondly,
I will also want to direct people to our ongoing
co ED pledge drive to get to a million um.
You can go to co Operative for education dot org
slash s y s K and donate. How about that.
I love it. I just saw the opportunity and I
jumped on I pounced on it. Yeah. Take that twelve
(39:12):
bucks that you would get for your third fried chicken
meal of the week. Yeah, chuck, and donate it to Coe.
Can we talk about really? Wait? Wait, do you really
eat fried chicken three times a week? Well? It depends
on what you're talking you know, I want to live
your life, man. I mean, if you're talking about just
like you know, if your chicken fingers here and there,
(39:33):
are you talking about like a full like fried chicken
and fried chicken meal? Yeah, no, that's not three times
a week, but shooting chicken fingers No, no, no, that's
not the same thing. All right, yeah fried chicken is No,
that's not the same thing. Yeah, it's the bone that
makes it unhealthy, right exactly. Eureka. Uh, we should talk
(39:56):
about chicken and waffles because that is a great food combination.
When I lived in l. A. Roscoe's was a place
that I would love to go and take people from
out of town who hadn't had chicken and waffles. Yet
it's become kind of a sort of a trendy brunch thing.
But it's been around for longer than I thought. Right, Yeah,
it's been around since at least the thirties, with Well
(40:17):
Supper Club in Harlem introducing a lot of the world
to it. But I think it's gone back even further
than that. But the question of whether it's Southern or
not seems to be an issue. And if you ask um,
a lot of Southerners will be like, no, this is
not a Southern dish. But they think that black migrants
from the South showing up in New York and l
(40:37):
a were the ones that developed it. So it's still
got a link to the South. It's just not necessarily
a Southern dish. Um. Did you ever eat at Gladys
Knight's House of Chicken and Waffles? No, because I was
living away at the time when it was open, it
was It was open till two thousand seventeen, Oh, in Atlanta.
I thought it went away before that. No, it was
open till then. I looked it up because I wanted
(40:59):
to make sure I remember correctly. That wasn't there anymore,
and that's not Unfortunately I missed out. Sorry Gladys Okay,
it's amazing. She had such a great singing voice. When
she spoke like that, well she was saving her voice
for singing. Uh And jeez, I hate to go off
track again, but since we mentioned her, I do need
to mention that my favorite backing vocals of all time
(41:22):
was the Pips on Midnight Train to Georgia. Really that
if you just listen to the background singers in that song,
just gorgeous, beautiful. Another thing you can do is go
listen to David Lee Roth singing without the music. That's
really something to listen to as well. Yeah, those are good.
Or the or any music video without the music is
always fun too, Yeah, especially when like you can hear
(41:45):
their shoes squeaking and everything the sneaker squeak so um chuck.
If you were alive and on social media in one
there is basically no way you weren't aware of what's
come to be known as the Chicken Sandwich Wars. Yeah,
it was a big deal. Um. There's a gentleman named
(42:08):
Truett Cathy who founded a restaurant called Chick fil A
and claimed to be the first maker of the chicken
sandwich in the nineteen sixties. We have, you know, literal
proof that What he really meant to say was I'm
the first white man to sell chicken sandwiches in a restaurant,
because there had been chicken sandwiches going back to the
nineteen thirties, um, in places like Topeka, Kansas. Uh. In
(42:34):
Ebony magazine, they were uh, they were talking about the dish. Uh.
So it's been around for a long time. Chakathy did
not invent the chicken sandwich, and they need to stop
saying that. But chick I don't think that. But Chick
fil a is very famous for their chicken fried chicken
sandwich with a butter bun with pickles, and so all
(42:55):
of the all of the other fast food joints I
think beginning with Popeye said wait a minute, like some
of us are selling chicken sandwiches, but we should kind
of just do what they're doing. And the chicken wars started.
Chicken sandwich wars. Yeah. It somehow it started with like
some subtweets and shade being thrown on social media and
people clapping back, and between August of two thousand nineteen,
(43:20):
when I believe Popeye's debuted their chicken sandwich in February, okay,
less than two years eighteen national and regional chains debuted
or upgraded their chicken sandwiches in just that short amount
of time. And that's the reason why again is that's
why it's become known as the Chicken sandwich Wars. And
(43:41):
I was reading about it. I read one of the
most corporate buzz speaky articles I've ever read in my
life about the phenomenon of the Chicken sandwich wars, and
this one executive they call them quick service restaurants now,
not fast food restaurants. This one QSR executive explained that
um Chicken has a longer innovation runway then things like
(44:03):
burgers that basically burgers have been done to death. There's
nothing more you can do with the burger they've been trying.
But Chicken, it's wide open. But then this I think
it was a hype beast article said at the end like, well,
if the innovation runway so long, basically everybody's just coming
out with their own version of the exact same sandwich,
and are we really innovating at this point? And I
(44:25):
think they ultimately said, well, if that's what the people want,
give them what they want. Yeah. I I do agree
though that I hate the longer runway corporate speak. But
you can do a lot of things with the chicken breast,
and it's usually breast that's being made for the sandwich.
Good point. You know, you can have like a honey
soy glaze, or you can have it like a saracha thing,
or you can have it fully buffalo hot. Uh. You
(44:48):
can throw some cheese and bacon on there. You can
have lettuce and tomato like. There are a lot of
I think, more variations on what you can do, so
I would agree with that. Yeah. And speaking of hot,
I'm meant to tell you Prince's menu includes a light mild,
so not even mild light mild, so they've got something
for you to chuck. Yeah. And speaking of hot, I
(45:08):
also want to mention that cold fried chicken is even better. Yeah.
It is really good. Yep, for sure, it travels well. Yeah.
So the chicken wars are still pretty much going on.
They're probably going to be going on for a long time.
But I think it's turned into more of a cold
boar than the hot war it was. Um, but Olivia
(45:29):
helped us with this. I don't I don't know if
you if we mentioned it or not, but um, we
really can't finish this episode without talking a little bit
about the science like why fried chicken is so good
because if you stop and think about it, it is
an incredibly simple dish. You just take some chicken, you
dip it in some sort of flour based mixture. Um,
you put it in hot oil, and then you eat it.
(45:52):
That's really all there is to it. Yeah, it can
be that simple. Uh. And that is a very simple
like dry fry prep ration, the sort of the lighter
the flower for me, the better. Um. But you can
you can brine it overnight. That is a really really
great way to make it super juicy. Um. I don't
think he listens to the show, but I'm a big
(46:15):
proponent and follower of Kenji Lopez Alt um great Instagram
page and just seems like a good guy. And he's
I think he's buddies with John Hodgman and Jesse Thorn
and appears on their show. So shouting out Kenji Lopez
Alt because he always breaks down food science in a
way that's like really cool, like hey, here's why, like
(46:37):
the reasons behind the fried chicken or the chocolate chip cookie,
and here's what's actually happening and why I say to
prepare or why people recommend you prepare things a certain way. Uh.
And in this case, um Kenji Lopez Alt says, you know,
you can add garla hot sauce, you can add dil,
but really brining it is one of the big keys
(46:58):
because you want to get that salt go in in
like in a cellular way. Yeah. Remember our old friend homeostasis.
So when you dip a bird or soak a bird
in brine, which is at least one tablespoon per one
cup of water, that's a basic salt brine. Um, the
salt concentration outside of the bird's cells is higher than
(47:21):
the concentration inside the bird cells. So the stuff outside
migrates inside, and in doing so, it actually allows it
to draw in more water. Because when you're frying chicken,
it's actually and by the way, I remember our super
Stuff Guide to the Economy and that one economist is
like chicken. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that every time
(47:43):
I say chicken ever since then, I always think of him.
But um, when you fry chicken, it's a it's a
very dehydrating process because you're cooking it in oil that's
really efficient at transferring the heat and So when you
add um that much more water that ability a whole water,
you you lose a bunch, but you still retain a bunch,
which makes for juicy, juicy chicken. Yeah. And it also
(48:07):
like helps break down the proteins and the muscles and
breaking down those fibers is gonna make it more tender. Uh.
It's all just gonna make it more delicious. Uh. That's
why you brian your turkey before Thanksgiving. Uh. Since we're
shouting out books, uh, Jake Kenji Lopez Al Has written
quite a few, but had one out this year UM
called The Walk Recipes and Techniques, where he just basically
(48:30):
sings the praises of the walk and it's like you
can do so many things in a walk, and it's
not just about making a stir fry. So check out
The Walk, Good Good book town on yourself, and also
check out UM the this He was interviewed UM in
an article in inverse Um talking about the science of
fried chicken, and the author does a really good job
(48:51):
of um tracing their own journey and trying fried chicken
and gives a lot of great tips because it's a
really as simple as it is, it's a very intricate
process that you can screw up really fast if you
let your oil get too hot, if you let the
chicken brown too long, if you use the wrong kind
of seasonings. There's you want to do some research first
before you try it. But if you do it just right,
(49:12):
it comes out like chuck will be knocking on your
door if you do it right. Yeah, that authors Eric Decker.
So you can also look at Eric Decker's recipes. Uh,
you've got to use the right kind of oil. Different
people have different things to say about oils, but you
want to have a high smoke point. Um. So you know,
everything from beef and duck fat to peanut oil to
(49:33):
saffler safflower oil is recommended. And just experiment with it,
get in there and trying to skill it deep prying. Really,
I mean, it's all gonna be messy, it's all gonna
stink your kitchen up. It's it's just a it's a
lot to undertake. But um, that's why I don't really
make it at home that much anymore. But it's good stuff.
(49:54):
I love it. There's a couple of things you could
invest in just real quick that are fairly cheap. One
is a um grease splattering cover. Yeah, yeah, one of those.
Take a little screen. It works really well, doesn't it's
just cleaning it his gross. And then the other thing
is a candy thermometer. You can get them for very cheap,
and you want to basically get the oil to a
very specific temperature when you're frying, and keep it at
(50:16):
that temperature as much as possible. Yeah, Okay, that's it,
and then go forth and make fried chicken. How about that? Yeah,
just don't bred it too much. There you go. Wise
words from Chuck. Uh. And since I said that, everybody,
of course, it's time for a listener mail. Hey guys,
long time listener, first time writer in, or want to
(50:37):
chime in and let you know how much your show
means to me. I'm a nineties kid turned dad, and
I always find your shows delivery well cared for, as
well as your constant vigilance to remain as unbiased as
possible when presenting a topic. I have a young son
I always try to set a good example for as
well as encouraging exploration of the world around him, and
I find Chuck's candidness about the ups and downs of
(50:58):
raising his daughter particular really helpful. In my day to
day anyway, Guys, I'm a city planner for a city
in Florida and it's a public sector government employee in
the heart of the sub South. Consistently find myself greeting
my teeth, dealing with every flavor of quote Florida mand
and listening to your show always revised my sanity. After
a tough day at work as an urban planner, I
(51:19):
found that your show is about urban planning. Central Park
the World's Fair have been my favorite. Go Too is
a new more recent shows on license plates in vasectomies
helped spur my to do list of both renewing my
registration and uh, you know the other thing too. Last thing.
Very happy to hear that you guys are getting back
on the road. Any chance for a Central Florida show
in the future. Thanks for everything you do. Still trying
(51:41):
to get my wife on in on the Worst Kept
Secret and podcasting, but one day I'll get to her. Cheers.
That is from Mike l and uh Mike. In addition
to talking about Nashville, I think we're probably gonna I
want to try another Orlando show this year, right, Yeah,
why not? Let's do it. Orlando is a great town. Yeah,
so I think we're we're gonna try and make one
of our little swings hometown show in Atlanta and Orlando
(52:04):
for Josh and then Nashville because it's close and we've
never been there. Nashville for Princes. Yeah, well exactly was that, Mike?
It was mike L. Mike L. Okay, thanks a lot, Mike.
That was a great email. Thank you for that, and
we're glad we can help you keep your sanity. Uh
And if you want to be like mike L and
get in touch with us, you can wrap it up
(52:26):
in an email, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, in spirit, and
that makes this Stuff you Should Know Chuck's Favorite Food edition. Yeah,
(00:24):
my favorite food this is I don't blame you, Chuck,
like I love fried chicken, but I love it even
more after researching this, I've just got this whole must
have attitude. And I think that that brings up an
important point that we should lead with, which is, if
you are vegan, you should probably skip this episode because
you're not going to be vegan by the end of it.
I'll tell you that much. Yeah. You know, people ask
(00:47):
the favorite food question. You get that a lot in
your life, and I guess I sort of went back
and forth over the years with different things. But it's
fried chicken. It is fried chicken. Okay, Well, then are
you are I'm guessing something of an expert for Atlanta
fried chicken, best fried chicken in Atlanta. Oh man, Sorry
(01:08):
to put you on the spot. Do you want to
come back to it at the end of the episode. Well, no,
I was afraid you would ask me, what, like, what
my favorite of all time? Was there something? Um, that's
really hard because because there's so many kind of small variations,
and I love fried chicken so much. I love so
many different kinds that I don't know that I could
say that I've ever had it, like put down my
(01:30):
fork and me like, are my fingers really and said,
this is hands down, like the best fried chicken I've
ever had. I've said this is some of the best
fried chicken I've ever had a lot, but I will
say this, and it is a little controversial if you
live in the South to take a grocery store allegiance
like this. But Publix is known for their fried chicken.
(01:51):
I don't like it. I like I like Croger's fried
chicken better, much better. I've never had Kroger's fried chicken.
But I don't like public Is fried chicken either. It's
not good. It's too bready for me. And I don't
know if it's my local Publics, but it always tastes
like it's like the oil is old acrid. Yeah, man,
it's just doesn't do it. I love Kroger's fried chicken.
(02:14):
I'm a big fan of minimal breading. Let that chicken
skin shine and uh, sort of a dry fry is
more my my jam. I have had the experience of
putting my fork down, actually my fingers down and saying
like that was the best fried chicken I've ever had.
(02:36):
It was, um remember that that restaurant indicator Watershed. Oh sure.
So the head chef was Scott Peacock and he and
his mentor Edna Lewis came up with this fried chicken
recipe that they used to serve it at Watershed. It
was I mean, I've never had anything even approaching it,
(02:57):
and I've had really good fried chicken too, I would
say second probably Colonnade over on chester Bridge really good,
but this was it was just an entirely different level.
And you can find the recipe online really easily, and
it's pretty, it's pretty hashtag basic, but something about it
all comes together and makes it just just astoundingly good.
(03:19):
It's so good. Yeah, it's just so good, Chuck. I
think Emily Sailors from Indigo Girls was co owner or
owner of Watershed for a while, may still be. I
don't know, No, she sold it, okay, I think yeah,
And they moved and Scott Peacock moved on and everything
it was it was like the Beatles for a second.
I am also going to carry out this and shout
(03:40):
out my grandmother Bryant Opeal. Bryant's fright chicken was really
my favorite. I haven't had it, you know. She died
at the age of a hundred and one, uh, about
eight years ago, but she hadn't been cooking for a
while either, So it's been since I was probably in
my twenties since I had opals uh, and hers was
(04:03):
And I'm a big fan of this preparation, not deep
fried or pressure fried, but skillet fried, which is when
you have a cast iron skillet and you're you know,
you're flipping the chicken. You're letting it fry and flipping
the chicken because it's not completely covered in oil. And
she also used just whatever grease was in the big
(04:24):
jar on her stovetop. She would just throw all the
grease in there from everything she ever cooked, and it
would harden or you know, uh, congeal into this lardie
jar of goodness. So she would just kind of just
slop whatever that was. Um, so it's probably some bacon
grease in there, not probably most definitely country ham stuff.
(04:45):
That was all kinds of of meaty congealed fat in there.
Yeah it sounds good. Her stuff was so good. So um. Yeah,
So we're talking fried chicken. We could just keep doing
this if you want. I know, we should start food
show maybe when we eventually retire. If we start a
food show, we're naming it Opal Bryant's Fried Chicken, Okay, okay,
(05:08):
or if we ever open a restaurant, that will be
the name. So yeah, we'll do a food show sometime sometime.
This will be one of those things where we can
be like and our fried chicken episode that we did
years back was really good too. This is gonna be
like that kind of episode. So we're talking fried chicken,
and it's one of those things where everyone associates the
dish with the American South, and for good reason, that's
(05:31):
kind of where it it caught its um. It was
established in the way that we understand it today, which
is from what I can tell bone in chicken pieces,
breaded and fried in oil, and that is fried chicken.
That's American Southern American fried chicken. That's what purists will
tell you. Anything different is is not technically fried chicken.
(05:54):
But the American South is kind of where it got
its start, but it dates back even further further than that,
and even weirder, it seems like it might have come
from a specific place in Europe originally too. Yeah, Scotland,
if you can believe that there are appearances, I mean,
people would be being people have been eating chickens for
(06:16):
a long time. Uh. You can find recipes in books
from the eighteenth century for fried chicken. Uh. Those one
in seventeen thirty six. There was one in seventeen forty
seven where it's you know, clearly dipped in flour, fried
in some kind of lard. But it seemed like the
Scots are the ones who started frying it. And I
(06:37):
looked up this up in a lot of places and
kind of saw the same thing. Uh. You know, the
Brits didn't really care that much about eating things that
tasted good, so they would boil or bake their chicken.
That baked chicken could be good, but boiled chicken can
never be good. Uh. And the Scots said, no, we'll
flay it, and so they started frying it up in lard.
(06:59):
And we're really onto something, as it turned out. Yeah,
And the reason why at least one food is Storian is.
This is their theory. But the reason why it kind
of has legs is that a lot of the Scots
and Scott's Irish um colonists who came to the United States, um,
(07:19):
they owned slaves, enslaved people, and they think that the
Scots taught their slaves to cook this for them, and
that's where the origination of um black American Southerners having
this um like being the kind of the place where
fried chicken originated. That's where they think that it probably
(07:41):
came from Scotland. Yeah, And I mean, I think what
we can say for sure is that's where it was perfected.
Were these enslaved women, Uh they spiced it in such
a way because Scotland and in the UK, like, they're
not known for their for their they're doing much better now,
but they weren't known for the most flavorful um spiced food.
(08:04):
So it was even though they were frying chicken, it
was it was known as a little more bland until
they got to the American South and these women started
spicing it right, and that's where it became this this
really really scrumptious and delicious food that we know today
brought over from Scotland, but perfected in the American South. Yeah,
(08:24):
I think the theory, the other theory that was, you know,
long held is that it was brought over by um
West African slaves to America. Um, but I think people
have done investigations around West Africa and there isn't a
fried chicken dish that. Um. They would fry their chicken
lightly over there, but then they would braise it for
the rest of the time. And I think the Brits
(08:45):
would do that too. Um, you know, it isn't the same,
so they actually do think it kind of came from Scotland,
but yes, perfected by um enslaved cook women in the
American South. And there's mentions of it too, I think,
dating back to the seventeenth cent so it is an
all American dish for sure. Yeah, it was. Um, it
was a dish that was a little more of a
(09:06):
treat at the time, at least preceding the Civil War. Uh.
It was very labor intensive to get these chickens and
to pluck the chickens and prepare them and cut them up.
And it wasn't like just like throwing a whole plucked
chicken into a pot kind of thing. Uh. There was
no air conditioning obviously, so like you know, laboring over
a hot stove all day in hot grease. It was
(09:27):
just a lot to undertake. So it was a little
more of a of a fancy meal to have, um,
like on the fourth of July maybe or a big
like birthday celebration. And even though uh, these women, these
enslaved women were perfecting this dish, Uh, they their family
wasn't really allowed to eat it that much until they
(09:48):
were able to raise their own chickens. Um. There were
laws or I don't know about laws per se, but
um and slay people weren't allowed to own cattle. They
weren't allowed to own pigs, but chickens were sort of
seen as not very significant enough to restrict at the time.
So they let enslave people you know, own and raise chickens. Uh,
(10:08):
some of which they would actually at the plantation buy
from them to eat. Yeah. I think Monicello bought um
their chickens from their enslaved people working there. Yeah, I
think you're right. So, um, there was a up shot,
or there was an upside of the black women that
were cooking this under duress at the time, who learned
(10:30):
to perfect this dish. Was that after um emancipation, when
the Jim Crow South started, they were a lot of
them were able to support themselves by selling fried chicken
because they were the only ones who knew how to
make it correctly. And so there were there There was
a UM, a woman, American studies scholar named Psyche Williams Forsen,
(10:54):
who wrote a book basically so this chicken made this
house or this house was made by chicken. Yeah, was
called Building Houses out of Chicken Legs. Col Black Women,
Food and Power. Uh. And I do want to shout
her out too, because she has a new book out
this year that looks great. It seems like she really
explores um sort of the diaspora and how that affected
(11:16):
foods that Black people ended up eating sort of around
the world, especially in America. Uh. And there's a new
one called Eating While Black, Food, Shaming and Race in
America that just came out this year. And I saw
a couple of interviews whetherr She's just it's amazing stuff
that she's writing right on. So one of the things
UM that she explored where these um women called waiter
(11:38):
carriers who would show up along the tracks at railroad stops, um,
you know, and this was a time like when railroads
had really just kind of started up, and you couldn't
really get food anywhere on these cars. Dining cars hadn't
been invented yet. So these um, the these black women
who were called waiter carriers would show up with pies
(12:00):
or coffee or fresh picked berries or fried chicken and
would sell them like hand them to the customers on
the train through the windows. I think they sold chicken
breasts for like twenty five cents apiece and other like
like drumsticks and thighs for I think five cents apiece
something like that. And there's a specific town called Gordonsville, Virginia,
(12:21):
which became known as the chicken fried chicken capital of
the world. And apparently some people would go out of
their way to stop in Gordonsville, Virginia on their train
journey so that they could buy the fried chicken there. Yeah,
it was. It was a regional hub in Gordonsville at
the time. And they still have a pretty robust fried
(12:43):
chicken festival, I think in October. I think we missed
it this year, but I saw them refer to themselves
as the chicken leg Center of the Universe, which is
another fun name. But we should also point out while
this great sort of entrepreneurial spirit was being weren't after emancipation,
a lot of these women were also harassed and robbed
(13:05):
and things like that. So you know, they were they
were doing the best they could to make a living,
but it's still wasn't as above board as it should
have been. Of course, got so um they were eventually, um,
I guess outlawed by proxy after America started developing like
food safety laws. They're like, you can't do that anymore.
We're gonna start regulating vendors. And then also dining cars
(13:27):
came along and that really kind of did that. That
was the death and all of it. Forget this amazing
fried chicken being handed to you through a window for
a quarter. Come et in the dining car. We're featuring
British boiled checking for dinner tonight. It's probably right. So, um,
you said something about how these women were robbed and exploited,
and you know, there's a there's a through line through
(13:49):
a lot of American history where um, a lot of
black culture um gets kind of taken over by white culture,
and that the transfer is lost to history or erased
or blurred, or people just ignore it. So fried chicken
is actually one of those um things. Because if you ask,
like a lot of Americans on the street who invented
(14:10):
fried chicken, I would guess a significant portion of them
are going to identify Colonel Sanders as the person who did.
And he definitely did not. He wasn't even the first
fried chicken restaurant tour, but he was part of a
tradition where while he wasn't stealing directly from the labor
the intellectual proper you could say, of um, black women. Um,
(14:34):
he definitely benefited from it big time. There were people
who were just directly exploiting it. And there was a
restaurant chain in Salt Lake City that was open in
ve chuck. Yeah, this is one of you know, sort
of the shameful parts of our racism in America. This
is in the nineteen twenties. Uh, And it was you know,
(14:55):
it was just a time when you had like straight
up racist iconography on mainstream restaurant chains. Uh. And that
was the case with the coon Chicken in had racist
character caricatures on the logo. And it was in birth
of a nation. You know, it was like if it
makes an appearance in Birth of a Nation, that's like
(15:15):
the ultimate stamp of racism, of this sort of stereotype
of what this you know, this great food that was
invented by these enslaved people was then turned on them
and used against them as sort of a stereotype of
of whatever they wanted to say what they thought black
people were at the time, right, which was basically the
(15:37):
goal was to debase and demean black people so that
they wouldn't enjoy full citizenship, either politically, legally or culturally.
And it was we talked about it in our Watermelon
episode because I mean, like everybody loved watermelons and everybody
loved fried chicken, but the way that the white society
would point to it to kind of degrade black society was, well,
(15:59):
we all love it, but Black people really love it.
They're really crazy for watermelon, they're really crazy for fried chicken.
They'll do anything for it. And it just had this
kind of um, this this this purpose in this goal
and successfully of of demeaning, they making them seem less
of that even stuff that everybody enjoyed, they enjoyed it differently.
(16:19):
They were different. They were less somehow, and you know
that was apparently the fried chicken thing in particular was
was first sourced in Birth of a Nation. Alright, so
let's take a break and uh, let's talk about some
of the more fun parts of fried chicken. How about that? Okay?
And things stuck? Stuck. I don't know that you know
(16:54):
it stuck. And it's a great name. That's the name
of It's great with an X. Alright, so fried chicken. Well,
let's talk about chicken in general. Um, it wasn't really
the on the menu of every American who eats meat
(17:16):
like it is today. Chicken was was a distant third
to pork and beef for most of our history. Actually, um,
there's some stats here the National Chicken Council. It's pretty fun. Uh.
In nineteen sixty, Americans eight twenty eight pounds of chicken
per capita, and just a few years ago, in twenty nineteen,
that number was at ninety seven pounds, whereas red meat
(17:39):
went from one three to one twelve. So you know,
there there's been a big shift in um or a
shift in the kinds of meats that Americans eat. Uh.
And you know, chicken farming wasn't as big as beef
and pig farming for a long long time. It's sort
of a mom and pop thing, until they realized that
people really loved chicken, and we can fortify them with antibiotics,
(18:03):
and we can get those breasts unnaturally plump and get
build these huge barns to raise them in, and basically like, hey,
we can factory farm chickens just like we can cows
and pigs. Yeah, So that that really boosted chicken consumption.
And by the way, that nine pounds of chicken that
Americans eight in two thousand nine, I think it equaled
(18:24):
about eleven billion birds um. So the other thing that
happened in addition to cheap, widely available chicken UM were
new cooking techniques and the big cooking technique that really
turned fried chicken from something that took like up to
twenty minutes to cook correctly UM to something that you
(18:45):
could sell as fast food where it was just using
pressure cookers. So they would fry the chicken and a
pressure cooker and still people still do it today, and
the pressure would change, it would lower the boiling point
of the oil, so the oil could get hotter and
the chicken would cook faster. And if you did it right,
if you bredded it right, if you use the right
kind of breading, if you did you know, brine your
(19:07):
chicken and all that first, then you could cook this
stuff really fast and it would come out really good. Yeah.
So now Colonel Sanders comes into the picture. Uh. You
can't talk about fried chicken without talking about Harland Sanders. Uh.
And he got a sort of a late start as
far as his um chicken business goes. At the age
of forty was when he started serving chicken in front
(19:31):
of the service station he owned in Corbin, Kentucky. Then
opened up a cafe, Sanders Cafe across the street, serving
that skillet fried chicken that I love so much. And
then uh nine, so I guess he was forty nine
years old he finally develops this eleven secret eleven herbs
and spice recipe cooking in the pressure cooker. Uh. The
(19:53):
governor gave him his his his fake colonel ship. Uh
he was he was not an army man. The current
ship was bestowed upon him in an honorary fashion by
the governor of Kentucky. And that's when he started dressing
up like old Connell sandals and his white suit and
his bolow tie and his little white goatee, and and
(20:16):
a character was all of a sudden born. He became
more than a man. I read a little bit about him.
Apparently he had a he was known for two things,
had a really really really really foul mouth, and was
a bit handsy, shall we say. Yeah. They described him
as a having a insatiable sexual appetite. And because it
(20:38):
was you know, the nineteen thirties and forties, would kind
of come into a room and just be like, hey, hey,
who can I grab onto? Not kind of thing. Did
not know that part? Yeah, that was? That was That's
the legend. I have a Colonel Sanders story. Let's hear it.
I was driving down the road one day south Troy, Atlanta,
(21:01):
and I um was driving alongside a Buick and the
buick had a Vanity license plate which ties into our
license plate episode, by the way, and it said KFC
C O L. And in the back uh the I
don't I never know what that thing is called. But
the back panel behind the back seat, between that and
the window whatever that like the rear dashboard, I guess
(21:23):
there was a Colonel Sanders bobble head and they pulled
up closer and closer to the driver. I realized I
was looking at the man who played Colonel Sanders throughout
the eighties and nineties, and he, I swear to God,
was wearing a white suit and a black string tie
and he was driving down the road in the twenty
one century in America. Yeah, I think it said Bolo
(21:44):
ties that string tie. It's a little different. Okay, that's enough.
But he was the t D actor. Yes, he was
the the Yeah, Colonel Sanders was long dead by this time.
This is the guy who played Colonel Sanders in all
the ads for decades of I mean, I guess it
was him, like, you know, run him off the road
and interview him. But this is there's just no way
it wasn't him. It was him. I could tell you
(22:06):
by looking at him, and then you know the other
kind of evidence. The vanity plaint in the bottle really
kind of teared it for me. Uh My one favorite
thing that they've done recently in the past few years
is when they started casting all the different people to
play Colonel Sanders. Oh that was great, wasn't Amy Sadie? She?
(22:27):
I think she was. I know, I didn't see them all,
but I thought that was a pretty pretty clever little twist. So,
by the way, speaking of Amy Sadaris, this is gonna
come out long after this, but do you know um
Leslie Jordan's. Yeah, he just passed away yesterday. I'm super
super gutted about this. Yeah, he was like just this
great guy. If you knew him on Instagram, he was
(22:48):
really fun and funny and all that. But like favorite
Instagram accounts, some of the um some of the like
interviews that I'm seeing of him now, and one of
them was posted by Amy Sadaris where he's talking about
how like he wanted to live a life of serve
because you know, taking care of other people like brings
you out of yourself. And he was just this great guy.
Um And if you if you aren't familiar with him,
(23:08):
go look up his Instagram account. And I didn't realize
it at the time, but now I do that the
world like really lost somebody special. So r I p
um Leslie Jordan's. Yeah. I had seen him on like
Will and Grace and other stuff like that, but his
his Instagram account is where I just fell in love
with the guy. Yeah, for sure, Hey, hunker downers. He was.
He was great and I was very very sad to
(23:30):
learn about that because I was just like I was
watching him on Instagram like the day before, like hanging
putin thing. Dave Hill, Well I saw that too, and uh.
The other tribute is very good to read is making
milayles Is. She's doesn't post on the Instagram much, but
hers was very very sweet and sad. Yeah, alright, back
(23:50):
to the colonel. Yeah, sure. He sold the brand in
nine four for imagine a boatload of money, and it's
a part of Young Brands, one of those humongous, uh
nebulous sort of food corporations that owns lots of fast
food restaurants. And it went from Kentucky Fried Chicken officially
(24:13):
to KFC and apparently because the state of Kentucky said,
you know that there's a lot of brands using our name,
why don't we trademark the name Kentucky so we can
make a little money off this, And so KFC said,
we'll just go by KFC then yep, so um, which
is hilarious that Kentucky did that. I wonder how much
money they made from it. I don't know, or I
(24:34):
wonder if all the brands just he said, all right,
we're just k whatever. Right. It really harmed though, Kentucky
black Powder must get ink, I think the hardest at
any rate. Um, the I saw that when Colonel Sanders
sold Kentucky Fried Chicken in sixty four, he immediately started
(24:55):
trash talking it to open his own restaurant. They moved
to block and from doing that, he sued them for
like a hundred million dollars. They gave him like a
million dollars and let him open the restaurant in exchange
for him to stop talking trash about KFC from that
point on. Yeah, he was quite a character. And also
I mean like the fact that he was considered a
(25:15):
possible running mate for George Wallace, the pro segregationist presidential candidate.
The fact that he was kind of like, you know,
a throwback to the Annabellum South with his ties and
his accent and all that. A lot of people just
presume he was racist. Um. And when Papa John's um
had that scandal where Papa John himself like used that
(25:36):
racial slur um, he he tried to say, like Colonel
Sanders used to say that who cares? And apparently Colonel
Sanders family came out swinging and we're like. They called
Papa John a weasel and basically a scumbag and said
like our grandfather, a great grandfather or whoever, like who
did not use racial slurs. He attended black church sometimes
(25:59):
like he was not He was many things, but he
was not a racist. So you shut your mouth, Papa John,
and Uh, I guess it worked. Uh. Popeyes came along
to rival KFC is probably yeah, we're talking about friends
kids arrival. Uh. Popeyes was founded in s Popeyes without
an apostrophe. By the way, the joke was from founder
Alvin Copeland, Sr. That he was so poor he couldn't
(26:22):
afford the apostrophe, which is a great joke. But that
was a Louisiana chain opened in nineteen seventy two as
Chicken on the Run. Uh, people were like him. It
was really not so great, so he spiced it up
a little bit and went to a more New Orleans
style chicken and changed to Popeye is named after the
cartoon character No named after Popeye Doyle Gene Hackman's character
(26:47):
in the French Connection. Fact of the podcast. That's the
weirdest fact I could ever imagine. I mean that is
a that is a trivia question right there for sure.
Oh yeah, because you're setting people up because everyone's gonna
say it's Popeyes because they're now using him as the
logo like Popeye, that Gene Hackman and this little But
(27:07):
you'd have to word it just so because you'd spook
some people and be like, that's too easy a question.
It's really here. You'd have to word it just right. So.
But yeah, Copeland was He was a character as well. Um.
I didn't read that he was handy or anything like that. Um,
he raced speedboats. Uh, he loved spending money. He was
a propertly get spender and he was not at all
(27:28):
ashamed or embarrassed about it. Um. And one of the
things he was well known for in New Orleans was
his Christmas displays outside his home and they were so
elaborate they drew so many people that like like sheriff's
deputies had to direct traffic in the area around it
because people would just park and stop and go look
at him. So he was that kind of guy. And
I mean there's a special place in the universe for
(27:50):
people who spend, you know, freely on Christmas decorations. Outside
of their house so much so that it attracts like
local townsfolk who come in, like get the Christmas spirit
from that kind of thing. I think those are special
kind of people, agreed, I love it. Popeye's was eventually
bought out again by one of these conglomerates called Restaurant
(28:12):
Brands International. Really great creative name there. Uh. And you
know there are KFCs all over the world. Um, there
are KFC knockoffs all over the world. The SFC in Iran,
Superstar Fried Chicken and PFC Perfect Fried Chicken in London,
which I looked up to see how closely they were
(28:33):
ripping them off. And the PFC the font is definitely
the same font, but the logos and stuff look different. Okay,
Colonel Sanders has like blonde hair right. Speaking speaking of
Colonel sanders appearance, apparently KFC's most profitable nation is um China. Big. Yes,
(28:55):
the people in China since have gone berserk for Kentucky
Fried Chicken. Um. Again, it's more profitable in China than
in the US. Um the offerings are a little bit different. Um, Like,
there is fried chicken, but it's not the most popular
menu item they have. You know, like regional dishes as well,
and I think those are a little more popular. But
(29:16):
one of the reasons um I saw floated for why
uh Kentucky Fried Chickens so popular in China is that
Colonel Sanders vaguely resembles Confucious and that there's like an
affinity for him there. Oh wow, um it is double Uh.
It's the biggest most popular fast food in China, double
the size of McDonald's as far as a number of stores.
(29:39):
And I think when they were first built in the eighties,
it was a little bit of a luxurious thing where um,
there was more room, the restaurants were really clean, and
it was sort of contrasted with like street vendor food
as a place where you can go and take your
family that's a little nicer. Uh. And I did look
up the menu items. You know, they sell kanji and
egg tar. Uh. There's something called a dragon twister, which
(30:03):
I really there's there's a cool article where this food
writer went there and ate a bunch of stuff and
wrote about it. But the dragon twister sort of looks like, uh,
you know, when they'll take peeking duck and wrap it
in like a thin pancake, almost like a roll with
cucumber and spring onion and stuff. That's what the Dragon
Twister is, except it's, um, it looks like a like
(30:23):
a chicken uh not finger, Yeah, like a chicken finger. Right,
it's a chicken finger wrapped in a chicken breast, That's
what I'm guessing. No, it's that thin pancake, but it
does have the sweet bean sauce and cucumber and spring onion.
Look looks realiant I want one of those. If we
have any listeners in China, please mail us at right,
just drop ship it. And then also in Japan, KFC
(30:46):
is huge, not as huge as it is in China,
but it's become a national um Christmas tradition. Chaos the
traditional Christmas dinner in Japan. Not I think you told
me that before. I love that. Yeah, I think it
was in a Christmas episode once. Yeah, that's good stuff.
And then Korea, I believe they do not have well
(31:06):
they do have KFC, but they took the KFC methods
and turned it into something else, which is Korean fried chicken,
which apparently, um, if you if you like fried chicken,
you're going to like Korean fried chicken. And there's there's
no reason you have to choose. You can like them
both because they're so wildly different that there's no reason
to choose. Just just love it all. Yeah, I mean
(31:29):
they're not that different. It's it's it's still crunchy fried chicken,
but in Korea they double fry it. Uh, So they
fry it, well, they fry it once and then they
fry it again, so it's gonna be once, not twice,
but it's gonna be extra crunchy. Uh. And then they
have a you know, they're known for this sticky spicy
glaze that's on it. So like, Korean sticky fried chicken
(31:51):
is really really great. I love it. It's one of
my favorite preparations. Uh. A lot of people think that
when American troops were stationed there after the into the
Korean War, they may have introduced locals there and then
they built on that on their own to to sort
of make it their own. Which actually that might be true,
because apparently prior to American occupation, they would steam their chicken.
(32:13):
That's how they prepared it typically. Oh really, which is
the opposite of crunchy. It really is boiled. Yeah, I
don't know. I was wondering that too. Um, because I
knew the steam part was coming back when we were
talking about boiled chicken, and I wondered which is worse.
I think boiled is still worse. Yeah, And like when
your dog has an upset tummy, you give them boiled chicken. Oh,
(32:35):
I hadn't thought about that. White ricking can be good
if you're making like chicken salad. Yeah, all right, yeah,
I just forgot. I forgot about that. I was just
thinking of like throwing like whole chicken breasts and bones
and everything in a pot and boiling it. Well, that
sounds awful. Yeah, I mean, none of it is very
appealing to me. After you've had fried chicken, that crispy
(32:56):
brown goodness. Uh. That Korea is so good at they.
I think in the ninety seven Asian financial crisis, a
lot of people went into business for themselves, opened up
their own little mom and pops chicken, uh and a
beer and fried chicken is a very famous combo in
South Korea. Great combo and America too. Yeah. And I
(33:20):
think now there was a study UM in two thousand
nineteen that found there were eighties seven thousand fried chicken
restaurants in South Korea and that's three and a half
times the number of Kentucky fried chickens in the entire world.
That's that. Yeah. South Koreans love their fried chicken. But
what's interesting is that, um another survey found that they
(33:42):
don't actually consider it to be a Korean dish, even
though they put such a spin on it that everyone
outside of the world considers that particular kind of fried
chicken Korean fried chicken. Apparently in Korea, they South Korea
should say they don't. They don't consider that. No word
on what North Korea thinks about it. Uh. There there
there are some chains from Korea that are open now
(34:03):
in America, one of which I haven't tried yet, but
there is one in Atlanta, just have to drive a bit.
There's one called bon Chon where I think it's in Fayetteville,
which is things south of Atlanta. Somebody didn't do their
market research first. Uh. And then there's one called Mom's
Touch Chicken, which is just now arriving in America. Uh.
(34:27):
And I think we should take our last break now. Yeah. Yeah,
and we'll talk about some more variations on fried chicken,
because why not? And things stuck stuck. I don't know
(34:50):
that you know it's stuck and stuck. It's a great name.
That's the name of it. It's a great name. Alright,
stuck snet with in with an x so chuck when
we go to Nashville. Let's just go ahead and say it.
There's a really good chance we're going to do a
show in Nashville this year. I was just next Nashville
last weekend. Oh yeah, did you go to Prince's Barbecue
(35:15):
Chicken Check? No, I went to the Stevie Nicks concert,
but uh had a great time, And I was like,
Nashville just needs to be on my list because it's
it's drivable and like, it's a fun weekend and they've
got Hot Chicken. We have a year too, but they
it originated there. Yeah, hot chickens everywhere now. But yeah,
there is a guy named Thornton Prince the Third who
(35:36):
opened uh, Prince's Barbecue Chicken Check. I think they call
it Prince's Hot Chicken Check now, I believe. But essentially
every version of Hot Chicken that is out everywhere, from
KFC to Dave's Hot Chicken to all the little like
Hot Chicken operations that are just going crazy, and for
good reason. Hot chicken is really really good. Um it
(35:58):
all starred it in Hadley Park neighborhood of Nashville thanks
to Thornton Prince the Third. Yeah, I don't love hot chicken.
Um Oh, I love it, man. It's so greasy, nasty,
it's so good. It is. One reason is because I don't,
like I'm developing more of a tolerance for good heat
here in my fifties, because I've generally avoided heat. But
(36:21):
it depends on the kind of heat. Cayenne heat, which
is the heat that is generally made to for the
hot chicken is is one that kind of burns me
more than is satisfying to me. Uh and and and
it's trust me. It's fried chicken. Is one of the
reasons I am so out of shape. But hot chicken
is even worse because like they dunk it in in
(36:42):
hot oil after they fried it and just sort of
shake it out, so it is doubly bad for you. Yeah.
The thing about researching this chuck is I was like,
there's so much good fried chicken to eat that if
you just selective, if you're just choosy and you just
go to someplace like Princes where you just go to
like like the best Korean fried chicken place in your town. Um,
(37:06):
or you just you know, build a time machine and
go back and eat some of Opal Bryant's fried chicken.
Like you're not going to be able to eat it
all that often. It will become a delicacy, which I
think it should be treated as because it is really
really bad for you if it's done right, and then
if it's if it's done in any kind of way
that's approaching healthy, it's not being done right and it's
(37:26):
probably not that good. So yeah, it's really bad for you.
But I think if you just treat anything in moderation
like that, you can you can have it and enjoy it.
That's my problem. What moderation for fried chicken? I know
it problem. I treated as a regular just like this
is just what you eat. I was. I was raised
(37:46):
on fried chicken. I love it so much, but I
do I do need to in in theory, you would, uh,
you would enjoy it more and be like, hey, I
haven't had having my fried chicken for the month and
I'm really savorite and enjoy it. You don't even have
to do like that. You could just be like I
I want fried chicken but instead of like hopping on
over to Kroger and getting it at the drop of
a hat, if you make it so you have to
(38:08):
drive to like a really good place, they have it less. Probably.
I don't know how this ended up. This episode ended
up in me giving you health advice because I'm not
really the person you should be listening to about that.
But here we are. Uh, yeah, I know, it is
what it is. I'm working on it. It is what
it is. Man. Poio campero is something we had in Guatemala.
(38:29):
Uh and now they have those in the United States.
There's one of Buford Highway and that is fried chicken
with an adobo rub, which is delicious. Yeah. By the way, Chuck,
two things. I was such a dummy that when we
went to Guatemala with co ED, I thought, oh, the
American chain has infiltrated Guatemala. There's poyo compero here. I
didn't realize the opposite had happened, because it's been it
(38:51):
was around in Guatemala starting in nine. And then secondly,
I will also want to direct people to our ongoing
co ED pledge drive to get to a million um.
You can go to co Operative for education dot org
slash s y s K and donate. How about that.
I love it. I just saw the opportunity and I
jumped on I pounced on it. Yeah. Take that twelve
(39:12):
bucks that you would get for your third fried chicken
meal of the week. Yeah, chuck, and donate it to Coe.
Can we talk about really? Wait? Wait, do you really
eat fried chicken three times a week? Well? It depends
on what you're talking you know, I want to live
your life, man. I mean, if you're talking about just
like you know, if your chicken fingers here and there,
(39:33):
are you talking about like a full like fried chicken
and fried chicken meal? Yeah, no, that's not three times
a week, but shooting chicken fingers No, no, no, that's
not the same thing. All right, yeah fried chicken is No,
that's not the same thing. Yeah, it's the bone that
makes it unhealthy, right exactly. Eureka. Uh, we should talk
(39:56):
about chicken and waffles because that is a great food combination.
When I lived in l. A. Roscoe's was a place
that I would love to go and take people from
out of town who hadn't had chicken and waffles. Yet
it's become kind of a sort of a trendy brunch thing.
But it's been around for longer than I thought. Right, Yeah,
it's been around since at least the thirties, with Well
(40:17):
Supper Club in Harlem introducing a lot of the world
to it. But I think it's gone back even further
than that. But the question of whether it's Southern or
not seems to be an issue. And if you ask um,
a lot of Southerners will be like, no, this is
not a Southern dish. But they think that black migrants
from the South showing up in New York and l
(40:37):
a were the ones that developed it. So it's still
got a link to the South. It's just not necessarily
a Southern dish. Um. Did you ever eat at Gladys
Knight's House of Chicken and Waffles? No, because I was
living away at the time when it was open, it
was It was open till two thousand seventeen, Oh, in Atlanta.
I thought it went away before that. No, it was
open till then. I looked it up because I wanted
(40:59):
to make sure I remember correctly. That wasn't there anymore,
and that's not Unfortunately I missed out. Sorry Gladys Okay,
it's amazing. She had such a great singing voice. When
she spoke like that, well she was saving her voice
for singing. Uh And jeez, I hate to go off
track again, but since we mentioned her, I do need
to mention that my favorite backing vocals of all time
(41:22):
was the Pips on Midnight Train to Georgia. Really that
if you just listen to the background singers in that song,
just gorgeous, beautiful. Another thing you can do is go
listen to David Lee Roth singing without the music. That's
really something to listen to as well. Yeah, those are good.
Or the or any music video without the music is
always fun too, Yeah, especially when like you can hear
(41:45):
their shoes squeaking and everything the sneaker squeak so um chuck.
If you were alive and on social media in one
there is basically no way you weren't aware of what's
come to be known as the Chicken Sandwich Wars. Yeah,
it was a big deal. Um. There's a gentleman named
(42:08):
Truett Cathy who founded a restaurant called Chick fil A
and claimed to be the first maker of the chicken
sandwich in the nineteen sixties. We have, you know, literal
proof that What he really meant to say was I'm
the first white man to sell chicken sandwiches in a restaurant,
because there had been chicken sandwiches going back to the
nineteen thirties, um, in places like Topeka, Kansas. Uh. In
(42:34):
Ebony magazine, they were uh, they were talking about the dish. Uh.
So it's been around for a long time. Chakathy did
not invent the chicken sandwich, and they need to stop
saying that. But chick I don't think that. But Chick
fil a is very famous for their chicken fried chicken
sandwich with a butter bun with pickles, and so all
(42:55):
of the all of the other fast food joints I
think beginning with Popeye said wait a minute, like some
of us are selling chicken sandwiches, but we should kind
of just do what they're doing. And the chicken wars started.
Chicken sandwich wars. Yeah. It somehow it started with like
some subtweets and shade being thrown on social media and
people clapping back, and between August of two thousand nineteen,
(43:20):
when I believe Popeye's debuted their chicken sandwich in February, okay,
less than two years eighteen national and regional chains debuted
or upgraded their chicken sandwiches in just that short amount
of time. And that's the reason why again is that's
why it's become known as the Chicken sandwich Wars. And
(43:41):
I was reading about it. I read one of the
most corporate buzz speaky articles I've ever read in my
life about the phenomenon of the Chicken sandwich wars, and
this one executive they call them quick service restaurants now,
not fast food restaurants. This one QSR executive explained that
um Chicken has a longer innovation runway then things like
(44:03):
burgers that basically burgers have been done to death. There's
nothing more you can do with the burger they've been trying.
But Chicken, it's wide open. But then this I think
it was a hype beast article said at the end like, well,
if the innovation runway so long, basically everybody's just coming
out with their own version of the exact same sandwich,
and are we really innovating at this point? And I
(44:25):
think they ultimately said, well, if that's what the people want,
give them what they want. Yeah. I I do agree
though that I hate the longer runway corporate speak. But
you can do a lot of things with the chicken breast,
and it's usually breast that's being made for the sandwich.
Good point. You know, you can have like a honey
soy glaze, or you can have it like a saracha thing,
or you can have it fully buffalo hot. Uh. You
(44:48):
can throw some cheese and bacon on there. You can
have lettuce and tomato like. There are a lot of
I think, more variations on what you can do, so
I would agree with that. Yeah. And speaking of hot,
I'm meant to tell you Prince's menu includes a light mild,
so not even mild light mild, so they've got something
for you to chuck. Yeah. And speaking of hot, I
(45:08):
also want to mention that cold fried chicken is even better. Yeah.
It is really good. Yep, for sure, it travels well. Yeah.
So the chicken wars are still pretty much going on.
They're probably going to be going on for a long time.
But I think it's turned into more of a cold
boar than the hot war it was. Um, but Olivia
(45:29):
helped us with this. I don't I don't know if
you if we mentioned it or not, but um, we
really can't finish this episode without talking a little bit
about the science like why fried chicken is so good
because if you stop and think about it, it is
an incredibly simple dish. You just take some chicken, you
dip it in some sort of flour based mixture. Um,
you put it in hot oil, and then you eat it.
(45:52):
That's really all there is to it. Yeah, it can
be that simple. Uh. And that is a very simple
like dry fry prep ration, the sort of the lighter
the flower for me, the better. Um. But you can
you can brine it overnight. That is a really really
great way to make it super juicy. Um. I don't
think he listens to the show, but I'm a big
(46:15):
proponent and follower of Kenji Lopez Alt um great Instagram
page and just seems like a good guy. And he's
I think he's buddies with John Hodgman and Jesse Thorn
and appears on their show. So shouting out Kenji Lopez
Alt because he always breaks down food science in a
way that's like really cool, like hey, here's why, like
(46:37):
the reasons behind the fried chicken or the chocolate chip cookie,
and here's what's actually happening and why I say to
prepare or why people recommend you prepare things a certain way. Uh.
And in this case, um Kenji Lopez Alt says, you know,
you can add garla hot sauce, you can add dil,
but really brining it is one of the big keys
(46:58):
because you want to get that salt go in in
like in a cellular way. Yeah. Remember our old friend homeostasis.
So when you dip a bird or soak a bird
in brine, which is at least one tablespoon per one
cup of water, that's a basic salt brine. Um, the
salt concentration outside of the bird's cells is higher than
(47:21):
the concentration inside the bird cells. So the stuff outside
migrates inside, and in doing so, it actually allows it
to draw in more water. Because when you're frying chicken,
it's actually and by the way, I remember our super
Stuff Guide to the Economy and that one economist is
like chicken. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that every time
(47:43):
I say chicken ever since then, I always think of him.
But um, when you fry chicken, it's a it's a
very dehydrating process because you're cooking it in oil that's
really efficient at transferring the heat and So when you
add um that much more water that ability a whole water,
you you lose a bunch, but you still retain a bunch,
which makes for juicy, juicy chicken. Yeah. And it also
(48:07):
like helps break down the proteins and the muscles and
breaking down those fibers is gonna make it more tender. Uh.
It's all just gonna make it more delicious. Uh. That's
why you brian your turkey before Thanksgiving. Uh. Since we're
shouting out books, uh, Jake Kenji Lopez Al Has written
quite a few, but had one out this year UM
called The Walk Recipes and Techniques, where he just basically
(48:30):
sings the praises of the walk and it's like you
can do so many things in a walk, and it's
not just about making a stir fry. So check out
The Walk, Good Good book town on yourself, and also
check out UM the this He was interviewed UM in
an article in inverse Um talking about the science of
fried chicken, and the author does a really good job
(48:51):
of um tracing their own journey and trying fried chicken
and gives a lot of great tips because it's a
really as simple as it is, it's a very intricate
process that you can screw up really fast if you
let your oil get too hot, if you let the
chicken brown too long, if you use the wrong kind
of seasonings. There's you want to do some research first
before you try it. But if you do it just right,
(49:12):
it comes out like chuck will be knocking on your
door if you do it right. Yeah, that authors Eric Decker.
So you can also look at Eric Decker's recipes. Uh,
you've got to use the right kind of oil. Different
people have different things to say about oils, but you
want to have a high smoke point. Um. So you know,
everything from beef and duck fat to peanut oil to
(49:33):
saffler safflower oil is recommended. And just experiment with it,
get in there and trying to skill it deep prying. Really,
I mean, it's all gonna be messy, it's all gonna
stink your kitchen up. It's it's just a it's a
lot to undertake. But um, that's why I don't really
make it at home that much anymore. But it's good stuff.
(49:54):
I love it. There's a couple of things you could
invest in just real quick that are fairly cheap. One
is a um grease splattering cover. Yeah, yeah, one of those.
Take a little screen. It works really well, doesn't it's
just cleaning it his gross. And then the other thing
is a candy thermometer. You can get them for very cheap,
and you want to basically get the oil to a
very specific temperature when you're frying, and keep it at
(50:16):
that temperature as much as possible. Yeah, Okay, that's it,
and then go forth and make fried chicken. How about that? Yeah,
just don't bred it too much. There you go. Wise
words from Chuck. Uh. And since I said that, everybody,
of course, it's time for a listener mail. Hey guys,
long time listener, first time writer in, or want to
(50:37):
chime in and let you know how much your show
means to me. I'm a nineties kid turned dad, and
I always find your shows delivery well cared for, as
well as your constant vigilance to remain as unbiased as
possible when presenting a topic. I have a young son
I always try to set a good example for as
well as encouraging exploration of the world around him, and
I find Chuck's candidness about the ups and downs of
(50:58):
raising his daughter particular really helpful. In my day to
day anyway, Guys, I'm a city planner for a city
in Florida and it's a public sector government employee in
the heart of the sub South. Consistently find myself greeting
my teeth, dealing with every flavor of quote Florida mand
and listening to your show always revised my sanity. After
a tough day at work as an urban planner, I
(51:19):
found that your show is about urban planning. Central Park
the World's Fair have been my favorite. Go Too is
a new more recent shows on license plates in vasectomies
helped spur my to do list of both renewing my
registration and uh, you know the other thing too. Last thing.
Very happy to hear that you guys are getting back
on the road. Any chance for a Central Florida show
in the future. Thanks for everything you do. Still trying
(51:41):
to get my wife on in on the Worst Kept
Secret and podcasting, but one day I'll get to her. Cheers.
That is from Mike l and uh Mike. In addition
to talking about Nashville, I think we're probably gonna I
want to try another Orlando show this year, right, Yeah,
why not? Let's do it. Orlando is a great town. Yeah,
so I think we're we're gonna try and make one
of our little swings hometown show in Atlanta and Orlando
(52:04):
for Josh and then Nashville because it's close and we've
never been there. Nashville for Princes. Yeah, well exactly was that, Mike?
It was mike L. Mike L. Okay, thanks a lot, Mike.
That was a great email. Thank you for that, and
we're glad we can help you keep your sanity. Uh
And if you want to be like mike L and
get in touch with us, you can wrap it up
(52:26):
in an email, spank it on the bottom, and send
it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
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