Frying

The technique reaches back to West African palm-oil frying and travels through the plantation kitchen, where Black cooks worked out the cast-iron, lard-based, dredge-and-fry method that defines Southern frying today. The communal fish fry, especially in the Black church and the Black Mississippi and Louisiana traditions, made frying a public art. Catfish, whiting, croaker, buffalo, perch, and porgy all came out of the same skillet on the same Friday night, and the cook was a person whose hands the community trusted.

Frying is the rapid cooking of food submerged in (or shallow-bathed by) hot fat held between roughly 325°F and 375°F (163–190°C). Mechanically, the fat strips moisture from the surface of the food in violent steam, the surface starches and proteins denature into a crust, and the interior steams in its own water below 212°F. The right combination of temperature, fat, coating, and vessel produces something no other technique can: a sealed, crisp shell over a juicy, fully-cooked interior. Wrong on any of those four variables and you get a greasy, soggy, undercooked, or burnt result.

1. 01

   Choose the vessel: a heavy cast-iron skillet for shallow frying, a cast-iron Dutch oven for deep frying. The mass holds the temperature when the cold food drops in. Thin pans crash and the food sucks fat.

2. 02

   Choose the fat: peanut oil, lard, or a blend of lard and neutral oil for chicken; peanut or neutral oil for fish; bacon grease for okra and green tomatoes if you want the smoke. Smoke point matters; flavor matters more.

3. 03

   Heat the fat to the right temperature and verify with a thermometer or a test scrap: 325°F (163°C) for bone-in chicken (longer cook), 350°F (177°C) for catfish and most fish, 365°F (185°C) for okra, hush puppies, and quick fries.

4. 04

   Build the coat: a wet step (buttermilk, hot sauce, beaten egg, or a brine) and a dry step (seasoned flour, or seasoned cornmeal, or a 50/50 cornmeal-flour blend). Season every layer, the brine, the wet, and the dry. Underseasoning happens at the dredge, not at the plate.

5. 05

   Drop away from yourself, never toward. Lay the piece in with the far edge touching the fat first so the splash goes away from your hand.

6. 06

   Fry in batches small enough that the temperature drops no more than 25°F. Crowding is the most common cause of greasy fried food.

7. 07

   Drain on a wire rack over a sheet pan, never on paper towels. Paper steams the underside and ruins the crust you just built.

8. 08

   Salt the moment it comes out of the fat, while the surface is still hot enough to grab the salt.

• Buttermilk brine for chicken: 1 quart buttermilk, 2 tablespoons salt, 2 tablespoons hot sauce, 1 tablespoon black pepper. Brine 8–24 hours.
• Seasoned flour (chicken): 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons garlic powder, 2 teaspoons onion powder, 1 teaspoon black pepper, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon cayenne.
• Seasoned cornmeal (catfish): 1.5 cups fine yellow cornmeal, 1/2 cup flour, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons paprika, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 teaspoon black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne.
• Fat depth: 1 inch for shallow shallow-frying chicken in cast iron; 3 inches for deep frying fish or hush puppies.
• Temperature recovery: keep the burner medium-high and adjust to hold the working temperature. The fat should sizzle steady, not roar.

• Pan-fried (shallow) catfish: 1/4 inch of oil in cast iron, single layer, flip once at deep gold.
• Deep-fried whole fish: scored on the bias, dredged in seasoned cornmeal, dropped into 350°F oil until it floats and the tail crisps.
• Cast-iron fried chicken (Edna Lewis lineage): half-inch of lard with a tablespoon of country ham fat, lid on for the first 8 minutes, lid off for the last.
• Fried okra: rounds tossed in buttermilk then in seasoned cornmeal, fried at 365°F until floating and golden.
• Hot-water cornbread / hush puppies: small cakes or balls dropped directly into the fish-frying oil after the fish comes out.
• Hot chicken (Nashville lineage, Prince's): fried chicken brushed with a lard-and-cayenne paste at the end. A whole tradition unto itself.
• Fried green tomatoes: thick slices, buttermilk, seasoned cornmeal, shallow-fried until the cornmeal blisters.

• ✕Cold fat. Food dropped into under-temp fat absorbs oil instead of sealing. Use a thermometer.
• ✕Crowding the pan. Drops the temp, steams the coat, ruins the crust.
• ✕Paper towels. They trap steam against the bottom of the crust and undo the work.
• ✕Salting too late. Salt only sticks while the surface is hot and slightly oily.
• ✕Reusing tired fat. Fat that smells fishy, dark, or bitter is past it. Strain after each use, discard when it stops being neutral.

• Sunday fried chicken

  Bone-in chicken brined or buttermilk-soaked, double-dredged in seasoned flour, fried in cast iron in seasoned lard or peanut oil to mahogany. The single most freighted dish in the canon, the one used to argue, to celebrate, and to feed civil rights movements.

• Catfish fried in cornmeal

  Whole pan-dressed catfish or fillets dredged in salted, peppered yellow cornmeal, fried hot until the cornmeal goes audibly crisp. The Mississippi Delta dish, served with hush puppies and hot sauce.

• Hush puppies

  Cornmeal, onion, egg, buttermilk, baking powder, scooped and dropped into the same fish-fry oil. The hush puppy is a yield-thinking dish: the fryer was on, so the bread fried in it.

• Fried whiting and fried porgies (Northern fish-fry tradition)

  The Friday-night corner-store fish fry of Detroit, Chicago, Harlem, and Philly — a whole secondary lineage of frying that descends from Southern catfish but uses what the Northern fish counter sells.

• Fried green tomatoes

  Underripe tomatoes sliced thick, dredged in cornmeal and seasoned flour, fried in bacon drippings. Originally a yield dish for tomatoes that would not ripen before frost.

• Fried okra

  Sliced okra tossed in cornmeal and salt, deep-fried in small batches until the slime is fully driven off and the rounds shatter. The technique that converts skeptics.

• Edna Lewis: Pan-Fried Chicken (The Taste of Country Cooking)
• Charles Gabriel: Pan-fried chicken method (Charles Pan-Fried Chicken, Harlem)
• Rodney Scott: Fried whole catfish
• Toni Tipton-Martin: Jubilee fried chicken
• Prince's Hot Chicken Shack: the Nashville hot lineage

• Jubilee, by Toni Tipton-Martin (Library)
• The Cooking Gene, by Michael W. Twitty (Library)
• The Taste of Country Cooking, by Edna Lewis
• Jubilee, by Toni Tipton-Martin
• Hot, Hot Chicken, by Rachel Louise Martin