Southern fried chicken is one of my guilty pleasures. I love it! When I buy large packages of chicken thighs (my husband's favourite part of the chicken), I separate and freeze most of them in seasoned buttermilk then flour them later before frying.
In NE Ohio where I live, they have this thing called "Barberton Chicken". People up here go on and on about it. My husband's aunts kept saying, "Oh you have to try it," and I did. Several times. Not impressed. It's a strongly seasoned chicken with a thick crust, not the delicate crispy chicken skin that I grew up on.
No one made better fried chicken than my SE Texas grandma, who was actually born and raised in Many, Louisiana (Cajun country) before meeting and marrying my grandpa and moving to Texas. She knew how to use a cast iron skillet like no other and had a fine array of them in her kitchen. Her Southern fried chicken had a kick to it, and her sweet honey corn bread was amazing. She grew an organic composted garden out back and had chickens running about, with huge pecan trees growing in the yard--she used to send us kids shimmying up the trees to shake the branches and let the pecans fall down (when our ma wasn't around to yell "y'all get down from there right now"). Don't get me started about grandma's pecan pie! But she never had a frozen chicken in her life I'd bet. She went out back and found a fat one and that was dinner.
So every time in the past I have gone South, I always went to some mom and pop diner to get fried chicken, mashed potatoes, greens, and cornbread.
Please post a pic.
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