Fried Chicken and Gravy - Page 101

This recipe is quite a production!  Overnight brining, buttermilk marinade, breading, then frying.  Oh, and by the way, you have to render fat from the skins and combine it with lard for frying.  But wait, you also have to flavor the oil by cooking bacon in it and then straining it.  Super simple!  I'm really hoping this is going to be awesome.

The good news is that Ox is doing all the prep and most of the cooking, so there's not too much for me to screw up...except the pictures.  Forgot my good camera and my phone only sees in tones of yellow.  At least it's not an iPhone (just had to have that spelling explained to me - I hate them even more.)  Here's a lovely picture of the chicken marinating - yum :(  At least the real thing looks good.

Ox is very happy that he got to use his new fry thermometer that his sister-in-law got him for Christmas.  It very handily told us how hot the oil that was pouring out of the pan and on to the burner was - 320F for the record.  No fire occured, by some miracle.

The major dilemma was that the pan couldn't do the whole batch at once, and you add butter for the last couple minutes.  We'll have to see what batch two looks like in the buttered oil.  The first batch was frickin' beautiful.  Perfectly golden brown with the lovely dark spots from contact with the skillet.

The gravy recipe was simple and easy.  We liked the idea of the soy sauce.  After tasting though, the chicken totally didn't need it.  The flavor of the sweet tea brine really came through in the incredibly tender chicken.  So Much Juice!