With Labor Day and the end of the picnic season at hand, I think back fondly— very fondly—to the platters of golden brown chicken Mom would serve on the backyard picnic table. My mother truly made the best fried chicken in the world.
She had learned her skill as a maid, cooking for southern women. Her fried chicken was crisp, tender and cooked to perfection. Nobody made it like she did.
As an ambitious and eager forty-something, I wanted that recipe and during a weekly phone conversation (she lived in Minneapolis) asked her for the secret to her success.
“I don’t have a recipe,” she said. “I just fry it.”
“Then could you tell me how you fry it?” She was willing so I hauled out a pad of paper, copied her every word, then made the attempt.
You guessed it. My fried chicken was not my mother’s fried chicken.
“Mom,” I complained during our next phone conversation. “It isn’t the same as yours. I’m going to watch you.”
The next time she visited, I did just that.
We started at the grocery store where she picked out a plump but not fatty whole chicken. Mom did not believe in buying the cut-up pieces. “You can’t get the best meat that way,” she announced.
We brought the chicken home where she put on her apron and I took out my notepad. Then I sat on a kitchen stool and watched, taking notes. Mom picked up my sharpest knife and proceeded to whack the chicken into wings, thighs, drumsticks and breasts.
She started taking off skin from every piece. “You didn’t tell me you did that.” I protested.
“Didn’t I?” she said. “I always take off the skin. Where’s your bacon grease? You have to fry the skin in bacon grease and Crisco.”
I recalled the small tin of grease always present on her oven top. “You didn’t tell me that either.”
“I didn’t?” She wasn’t happy till I produced some bacon grease. I found some in the back of the refrigerator. “Not very much,” she commented, “But I’ll make do.”
As skins fried to a crisp brown, she rolled the cut-up chicken parts in salt and peppered flour. Next, she threw out the skins and fried the chicken in the remaining grease.
“I didn’t know you threw out the skin.”
“Of course I do. Why would I leave it in? ” Eventually, she placed a platter of loosely covered fried chicken in the oven.
“I didn’t know you put the chicken in the oven,” I said.
“Really?” She concentrated on placing the cover just so.
That night my family ate the best fried chicken in the world.
When her visited ended, I tried my new updated recipe and it was better but never achieved the phenomenal fried chicken of my mother’s caliber.
Apparently, however, I inherited her ability to cook without specific written directions.
On a recent visit, my daughter watched as I made a family favorite—spaghetti and meatballs. She had been complaining that her spaghetti didn’t turn out like mine even though she faithfully followed my recipe.
Déjà vu occurred as she watched.
I drained a can of tomatoes. “You didn’t tell me you did that,” she pointed out.
“I always do that,” I said. “Otherwise the spaghetti gets too watery.”
And so it went. She watched and pointed out several other procedures I had neglected to tell her.
She went home and tried my upgraded recipe and managed to make a spaghetti and meatball dinner equal if not superior to mine.
But nobody has ever equaled my mother’s fried chicken.
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