Crispy Fried Chicken
Abuja, Nigeria ·
Aperçu
Buttermilk marinated, flour dredged, shallow fried chicken is an American Southern preparation, and this recipe is a straightforward version of it. It carries no African attribution in the source and none is claimed here. The connection to Africa is real but historical rather than culinary in this particular recipe. Frying chicken in fat is a technique enslaved West Africans brought to the American South, where it met Scottish shallow frying and the seasoning practices of Black cooks, and what emerged became one of the defining dishes of American food. That lineage is genuine and well documented, and it is why fried chicken appears in discussions of African diaspora food. What this recipe describes, though, is the contemporary American version: buttermilk, seasoned flour, cast iron skillet, and a comparison to a fast food chain. Africa has its own fried chicken traditions, from Nigerian peppered chicken to South African peri peri, and none of them is what is written here. It sits in the Worldwide Recipes collection rather than being presented as African.
That trick of letting the coated chicken sit until the flour turns into a paste before frying is pure gold o. I couldnt find proper buttermilk at the Sainsbury's here in Manchester so I just soured whole milk with lemon juice. The crust stayed so crunchy and didn't fall off in the vegetable oil at all. e sweet no be small thing.