Fried Chicken in America

It's its Southern part.

Buttermilk is used as a raising agent when combined with baking soda, making the crust lighter and fluffier. It might also be related to the African tradition of soaking meat in acidic liquid to cleanse it.

Fried Chicken & Potato Salad! -- Share Your Recipes

Such comfort foods...

Look, much of our food is processed, flavorless shit. Can we have at least one nice thing? 🍗

Ish delish!

What's with the waffles and fried chicken? Was that invented by mistake?

R2-the acidic nature of the buttermilk also tenderizes the meat.

Beats soaking it in Palmolive Dishwashing Liquid.

Soaking your chicken in brine also makes it more flavorful.

Isn’t it better to have the chicken dry before you fry it as opposed to really moist? Surely the skin would get crisper in that case.

Why the buttermilk in pancakes? Pointless.

Why waste all that buttermilk just to soak a couple of pieces of chicken? What do you do with the milk afterwards? Certainly not throw it away. Can I use it on cereal for my kids?

r10 Since you're going to be dipping it in flour or some other kind of "breading," it needs to be moist.

Sure R12!

Are your kids' names "Sam 'n' Ella?"

No, my kids’ names are “Gaysin ‘n’ Rayden.”

[quote]What's with the waffles and fried chicken? Was that invented by mistake?

I don't have the answer to that, but the combo is exceptionally good.

When you eat the chicken, little fried bits fall into the waffle crevices.

Then when you eat the waffle (with of course maple & not pancake syrup), those little chicken coating bits send that waffle into a whole whole other level of divine tastiness.

Americans invented the pancake and bacon combination. So I guess chicken and waffle would be good as well.

Fried chicken (or fish) and waffle comes from two main groups; Pennsylvania Dutch, and African Americans. You probably could throw southern (plantation/wealthy) in the mix, but since much of their cooking was for them by African American slaves then later domestic help...

Wells Supper Club in Harlem was famous for their fried chicken and waffles going back to the 1930's.

Fried chicken and waffles became famous at Wells (and other places one assumes) with certain trade like jazz musicians. They came to restaurants too late for dinner, but to early for breakfast. So Wells fried chicken and waffles fit the bill. Something you could eat late at night/early in morning that was filling after being out/up all night, but not so heavy it would keep repeating on you when going to bed in couple of hours.

"The earliest American chicken and waffle combination appears in Pennsylvania Dutch country during the 1600’s, when home cooks made waffles and topped them with pulled chicken and gravy. A different, decidedly soul food-inspired approach to the pairing worked its way into popular culture much later with the opening of Wells Supper Club in Harlem, New York. The restaurant, known simply as “Wells” to regulars, opened in 1938. Wells became a late night hotspot for jazz musicians, who would stop by late at night after their various gigs. The musicians, arriving too late for dinner but too early for breakfast, enjoyed the appetizing compromise of fried chicken and waffles. Before long, Wells was frequented by the likes of Sammy Davis Jr. and Nat King Cole (who held his wedding reception there)." Discover the History of Chicken and Waffles - PBS special

It really is nothing more than a variation of fried chicken (or fish) with some sort of carbs. Instead of rice, mashed potatoes, corn bread, or biscuits; you've got a waffle.

I for one think both foods are fine separately but I think pairing them is flat out stupid. Never heard of this abomination till about 10-15 years ago.

Go to Thailand and have a munch on southern fried chicken or northern fried pork and you'll never go back to eat that shitty US southern shit again.

[quote]Americans invented the pancake and bacon combination.

Krijg kanker, stomme klootzak.

If you put my fried chicken on a waffle you're in for a world of hurt.

I don't get the American obsession with buttermilk. Ranch for instance.

If they really want meat tenderized, nothing does it better than pineapple!

Look. You soak it in buttermilk or brine before you flour it and fry it.

R25 It's a holdover from Irish and Ulster Scots immigrants that got adapted by black Americans.

Europeans always find the aspects of American culture that stem from black people so off putting...

I'm not European, r28. I just hate Ranch. Admittedly, it's preferable to mayonaise.

R25

At least for marinades buttermilk or yogurt does have benefits.

My understanding is that buttermilk takes away the "gamey" flavor of pretty much any protein. Doesn't matter whether it's fish, chicken, or alligator.

However, pork and beef aren't usually gamey, which is why they are not usually soaked in buttermilk.

[quote] What's with the waffles and fried chicken? Was that invented by mistake?

Bobby Flay has told this story on his show many times, but supposedly it was an African American thing in NYC.

Lounge singers would want to eat after their late night shows, and it was late enough for chicken, and early enough for waffles, so they combined the two, and that's how it got started.

Fried chicken is /not/ African in origin.

R12 Buttermilk used to be a waste product to begin with (left over after churning cream into butter). Nowadays its a cultured milk product.

I have accidentally made butter by over whipping butter. So the watery milky liquid leftover is buttermilk?

Pioneer Woman says you can make buttermilk by adding white distilled vinegar to regular milk.

So I guess that buttermilk is just sour milk.

R34 I assume you meant "whipping cream".... yep that is buttermilk, although it used to be sour because the milk/cream had usually soured by that point.

R35

That vinegar to milk trick is as much like buttermilk as a trans is to real woman. It's nothing like the real thing.

Adding vinegar to milk is a trick suggested for when a recipe calls for buttermilk but one doesn't have. Works well enough for things like pancakes or other goods where acidity is called for as part of leavening. But finished products do not have same taste and other qualities that comes from using true buttermilk.

Truth to tell it is difficult to nearly impossible in some areas to find real true buttermilk.

As name suggests butter milk is made from fluids left over after cream was made into butter. However since nearly all milk sold today in USA is pasteurized at high heat during processing, you cannot easily find (if at all) unpasteurized cream that contains required bacteria to make real buttermilk.

Instead what you often find is "cultured" buttermilk which is a product made by adding bacteria and other substances to whole or skim milk; in essence to make it "sour".

Happily more and more small producers are making "real" buttermilk along with other dairy such as true sweet butter.

Of course if you live near a small family farm or something, and can get milk fresh from the cow......

What is virtually impossible to find nowadays is clabber, again for same reasons as real buttermilk.

r38 What is sweet butter?

See:

Personally prefer Irish butter.

Thanks for the link but it does not explain what sweet butter is.

What do you not comprehend?

"Commercial butter in the U.S. has to contain at least 80 percent butter fat and is considered “sweet cream” butter"

What more is there to say?

Butter is made from cream, "sweet" simply means just that as opposed to sour cream. Thus the resulting butter from "sweet cream" is "sweet butter" which is what is sold in stores. Your two main choices are salted or unsalted, but they are both made from sweet cream.

So sweet butter is just butter.

[quote]That vinegar to milk trick is as much like buttermilk as a trans is to real woman. It's nothing like the real thing.

?????

Absolutely amazing how clearly some are so unhealthily obsessed by a certain topic! Now, who in the world would have anticipated such a comment in a thread about fried chicken?

R40 and R43 Sweet butter is the regular butter we now buy in the grocery store. It was less common before refrigeration because milk had often gone sour by the time it was churned into butter.

But KFC doesn't use buttermilk, right?

R12 You can use the leftover buttermilk in your gravy.

Slightly off topic. How do you store a rotisserie chicken in the fridge so it won't dry out?

Cover it with waxed paper before you store it in tupperware.

Buttermilk in gravy? Wouldn't it be sour?

It's Shake n Bake and I haayllllped!

Korean Fried Chicken is so hot right now

Chicken and waffles in "Mildred Pierce" (1945, and the other, later one)

Kids...

Yummy

I don't know why everyone is saying use buttermilk - you can use plain old flour to "dress" the chicken to fry it. If you make a buttermilk batter, so be it, but I'm just saying that you can use flour.

Use buttermilk when frying shrimp. Simply delicious.

[quote]I don't get the American obsession with buttermilk.

It's kinda true.

I'm looking at the Old Buttermilk Sky, eating Buttermilk Pie, and driving down Buttermilk Pike.

It is not kosher

Fried chicken is one thing I don't bother making at home - it's a huge mess. We have a local chain named Dion's that makes the best fried chicken - that's what I get.

Well... what are they doing with that Popeye's chicken sandwich that apparently is causing folks to become deranged?

With brining and buttermilk, the fat becomes very moist and the chicken skin flabby. I still don’t understand.

Ranch dressing, I get, but the rest leaves me stumped.