If you’re not in the U.S., the buttermilk in this recipe is not what you probably think it is. In the US it’s skimmed milk that’s been soured with a Lactobacillus culture. Elsewhere buttermilk means the whey left over when you make butter. You can create your own US-style by adding a bit of plain yoghurt to skimmed milk and letting it sit a day or two in the fridge.
So.
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If you didn’t put a chopped onion in your marinade, you didn’t do it right.
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You can’t use just any vegetable oil. Olive oil will burn and taste nasty too. Southern cooks use peanut or sunflower oil.
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Mixing the seasoning in the flour is wasteful. You have to add way too much to get any flavor. Make your spice blend and put it in a sugar shaker. Shake it directly on the chicken before dredging in the flour.
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Double dredge. The crust is the best part. Season and dredge in flour once, then let sit on a rack for five minutes or so. Then back in the buttermilk and dredge again. Then fry.
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Buy an instant read thermometer. Heat management is critical. You’ll start your fry at 325 but as soon as you add the chicken the temp will plummet. If it goes much below 290, oil will start to soak in and make the breading soggy. You’ll need to boost the heat right away. Also temps will slowly climb while the chicken cooks so later on you’ll have to dial it back down. If you go much over 350, the chicken will burn. This is not an unattended recipe. You’ll also need the thermometer to check for doneness – you can pull them at 160 and they’ll coast the rest of the way to done.
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Creole seasoning is all well and good but you have no earthly idea how old those spices are. You can make a basic shake from 2 tablespoons kosher salt, 2 tablespoons Hungarian paprika, 1 tablespoon garlic powder, 1 teaspoon black pepper, and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper.
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The size of the chicken chunks is less important than the thickness. This is basic physics – how far does the thermal energy have to travel to reach the interior of the chicken? Pound them all to an even thickness and it won’t matter how much area they cover.
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Or you are like me and react badly to onions. Several days of stomach cramps and emitting noxious gasses from both ends of my digestive system just isn’t worth “doing it right”.
Does this work for chicken fried steak? I have yet to make that come out tasty.
And how about some cream gravy with dat chicken, please?
This sounds like just the right task for an electric oven, thermocouple on a multimeter, a relay or (better, because no arcing on contacts) an SCR to control the oven, and a programmable controller (arduino will do, raspi will make the coding easier, and most of the multimeters these days have USB interface, even if usually some sort of serial-to-USB-serial converter or to USB-HID frames, so getting the raw serial optocoupler-isolated data is not such a big problem). The oven control via an optocoupled SCR can be done via any GPIO pin.
Ideally use a SCR with zero-crossing feature, so it will wait to the zero voltage on the line before it switches; generates much less EMI and reduces the chance some stray pulse locks something up.
Even for manual use, such a thermocouple is user-friendly as the readout is instant and outside of the oven.
For bonus points, attach a smoke detector to one of the GPIO pins as an emergency shutdown. Or maybe couple its output right to the SCR’s input, so it forces the oven off regardless what odd state the control electronics could find itself in.
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For me, that’s a completely different animal.
For me, that involves a mallet and cornmeal.
For me, that involves transglutinase, eye fillet and KFC.
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I am religious about chicken fried steak. I have never once tried to make it at home. We can discuss my favorite places to get chicken fried steak all over the globe, however. If I start working on this at home it’d require I also learn the perfect gravy. So much dedication and…
One of my favorite chicken fried steaks in the world is just 15 miles and maybe 3 stop signs, one traffic light away. It’s a great drive and gets me out of the house.
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oh man, you are really tempting me to fix the seasoning on my cast iron… but I would need to figure out a wheat-free version for my wife.
Powdered corn flakes.
I am gonna strip the seasoning off the Griswold Chicken Fryer maybe today/tonight and start the seasoning process.
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thanks!
[quote=“jlw, post:28, topic:51723”]
One of my favorite chicken fried steaks in the world is just 15 miles and maybe 3 stop signs, one traffic light away. It’s a great drive and gets me out of the house.[/quote]
For those of us who are in the North Bay a lot, these directions could be a little more precise.
Pine Cone Diner in Point Reyes Station.
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You want white or brown?
It’s more or less the same, just depends on where you start.
For white you don’t even really need anything from the fried chicken, although I suppose you could use some of the oil as your “fat”. Heat equal parts “fat” (this can be oil, butter, or your fry oil) and flour. You can go a tad more heavy on the flour if you like. This needs to be done in a metal pan, I wouldn’t recommend non-stick because this gets really hot. Cook this on medium heat for about 3-4 minutes. You want the mixture to just slightly brown to a nice tan color. If you want creamy gravy add milk, if you want a less thick gravy go water/chicken broth. You need about 1 cup of liquid per 1 to 1.5 tablespoons of flour (the higher the flour the thicker the end result will be) - there is no hard and fast rule here you can always add more liquid as you go along. I prefer to heat my liquid if possible. Grab a whisk and pour a little at a time (like a 1/4 cup) in and whisk it, keep that heat about medium. It’ll clump up as soon as you add liquid, just keep whisking. Once all the liquid is added just keep whisking until smooth, bring to a simmer and leave it for a minute. Stir occasionally or whisk as needed to break up lumps. Once it thickens reduce heat to low. Season and serve.
Brown gravy is the same, but here you ideally start with the flour bits of “burned” goodness found in the bottom of your chicken frying pan. Add about a tablespoon of that to a tablespoon of oil and flour. Cook on medium until dark, and I mean dark brown. Like you think it’s burned beyond saving (this is why I never opt for a non-stick pan, it gets way hot.) Once it’s all dark, proceed as above and whisk in chicken broth/stock. Bring it back to simmer once all your liquid is added (in this case around 1.5 to 2 cups since you are dealing with 2 tablespoons or so of flour, but remember it’s easier to add more than having to much). Then spice to your desire.
Every “recipe” I’ve seen for gravy doesn’t really explain the concept of browning the flour, some might say cook it, but the first time you make brown gravy you’ll think there is no way it won’t come out tasting burnt. Recipes are funny things, a lot of specific details are left out because that’s just the way someone cooks all the time.
White gravy made with sausage as a starting point and the grease as your “fat” is typically called saw mill gravy in the South. It’s a good place to start because it’s pretty hard to mess up…
That’s even more useful than I expected; thanks!
I highly recommend it. Wonderful restaurant. Exactly what a diner should be.
It’s a bit late in the topic. But a cool tool for chicken fried steak, pot roasts, and cheap budget cuts of meat. Is a needle tenderizer.
I can’t believe that not one person questions the wisdom of this as a breakfast meal. It’s a way to double or treble the calories in the chicken. Did no one teach Americans that deep fat frying is bad for you?
My tongue respectfully disagrees.
[drool]
That’s not unhealthy eating, that’s efficiency.
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