The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 1080

COATINGStyle1:
FLOURDREDGING
Southern-StyleFriedChicken
Iknowhowpassionatepeoplecangetaboutfriedchicken,
andI’mnotonetotellyouwhomakesthebest,butifyou
were to ask Ed Levine, the Serious Eats overlord, he’d tell
you that it’s Gus’s, a sixty-seven-year-old institution in
Mason, Tennessee. They serve fried chicken that he
describes as incredibly crunchy, with a crisp, craggy crust,
juicy meat, and a “cosmic oneness” between the breading
and the skin.We’re talking fried chicken so good that you
havetoresorttometaphysicstomakesenseofit.
Forme,asakidgrowingupinNewYork,friedchicken
came from one place, and one place only: those greasestained cardboard buckets peddled by the Colonel himself.
To my young mind, KFC’s extra-crispy was about as good
asitgot.Idistinctlyremembereatingit:pickingthecoating
off in big, fat chunks; tasting the spicy, salty grease; and
shredding the meat underneath with my fingers and
deliveringittomywaitingmouth.Itwasheavenly.
But times have changed, and as is often the case,
revisiting those fond childhood memories results only in
disappointment and disillusionment. All over the country,
there’safriedchickenandsoulfoodrenaissancegoingon.
Even the fanciest restaurants in NewYork are adding it to
theirmenus.Myeyesandmytastebudshavebeenopened
to what fried chicken trulycan be. I may still digthe


ultracrunchy, well-spiced crust that KFC puts on its birds,
but that’s about the only thing it has going for it. Flaccid
skin, dry and stringy breast meat, and chicken that tastes

like,well,it’shardtotellifitreallytasteslikeanythingonce
yougetridofthecrust.

Thatsaid,stylistically,itcan’tbefaulted.SoIfiguredthat
I could somehow manage to take what the Colonel started
andbringittoitsultimateconclusion—thatis,deepchicken
flavor; a flab-free skin; juicy, tender meat; and crisp, spicy
coating—Imightjustbeabletorecapturethosefirstfleeting
childhoodtastesoffriedchickenasIrememberedthem.
InsideOut
I started with a working recipe of chicken pieces simply