My Aunt Ruby's was so good that she got an article about hers in the New York Times during the '96 Olympics in an article where the best of the best Southern Food was.

I have the article here somewheres.

Found it!

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/0...iscuits-atlanta.html

The alleged decrease is not so much from losing a grand skill ......... a 6 year old could figure it out, but that people probably don't want their whole house smelling like a truck stop diner.

An excellent article for the NYT.

I do it all the time. Guests love it.

I think tastes have changed. my kids aren't interested in eating it. I make it every so often. Would do anything to have my father's fried chicken (and the time it takes to cook it with him).

Surprised, and kind of disappointed, that no one has posted a photo in this thread.

My mother’s pan friend chicken was so good. Every Sunday, after church. We raised our own chickens.

My mother, born in 1947, stopped cooking fried foods about 1985 or so. I never really developed a taste for all that cooking oil...except maybe french fries. I'm not really a health food fanatic, but I really don't care for fried foods.

I have a old cast 4" deep cast iron skillet. On the bottom is stamped "10 1/2 INCH CHICKEN FRYER". I got it form family who are farmers in S. Dakota. I am sure it's been used to fry up a piece of chicken or two.

I wouldn't call it a 'skill' in decline, just a dish in decline in popularity. It happens all the time.

If you know your way around a kitchen you can make scratch fried chicken pretty easily. I've done it and I was born several decades after 1950.

Plus, we live in modern times, nothing is ever lost with the internet. I guarantee if you plug 'homemade pan fried chicken' into youtube, you'll pull up dozens of videos on the topic, mostly from people born post 1950...


Now biscuits... That's a whole other story.

quote:

Originally posted by Bassamatic:
Oh yeah, it's becoming a thing of the past. " It made such a mess of the kitchen I think she just said to hell with it."

Big reason for sure.

But, Very few young cooks both men and women today, know anything other than pre-prepared foods to cook. The conception of chicken coop to dinner plate would perplex them.

I would wager that there is more fish going into grease than chicken these days.

What do we think constitutes a "young" cook? I'm 40 and can pan fry pretty damn good chicken. It's not exactly black magic, you just need some oil and a ban with a big enough thermal mass that the oil stays the right temp when you drop the chicken in.


Both my wife and I can cook pretty well, as can several friends of our basic age group. We routinely have dinners at each others houses where we cook dinners for each other. We recently started inviting our 20 something niece over to dinner about once a month (she's going to college near us) and we have her and her boyfriend come over and help cook the meals. They are catching on.

Question for the pan fried fans - if you were blindfolded and fed deep fried chicken and pan fried chicken could you identify which is which?

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
I forgot to mention cutting up a whole chicken.

jaded, since I was a meat cutter/meat manager for 19 yrs starting about 1982....

but yes, finding someone to cut up a whole bird is not easy,

For anyone who wants to have some really good chicken, the recipe in Cooks Illustrated years ago is awesome and easy, just some advance prep time.

Ingredients here, can't find the full recipe other than their site. I think you can get a "free" preview week/month there.

Buttermilk brined fried chicken.

And yes I can cut up a whole bird. Actually, first time a couple weeks ago discovered that it is INCREDIBLY easy to pull the skin off the entire bird before parting. All these years, never occurred to me. No - I'd not be frying skinless chicken, this was for some gumbo.

Mrs. BB61 likes to fry chicken in a case iron skillet and I, of course, love to eat it. I haven’t seen a whole chicken in a forever. But, cutting it up is no different than a pheasant which I do all the time so we are GTG.

Forgot to mention that my 15 year old son got a cast iron skillet for Christmas.

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:

For a man with time on yachts and fancy destinations...

Sometimes exposure to the "finer things", especially extended exposure, can make one appreciate the simpler things all the more.



.

My take, people now do all their frying in "healthy" oil, you are supposed to use lard (makes all the difference)
using "healthy " oil just makes homemade fried chicken, well, pedestrian
using lard makes it a mouth watering dish to savor

P

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:

And yes I can cut up a whole bird. Actually, first time a couple weeks ago discovered that it is INCREDIBLY easy to pull the skin off the entire bird before parting. All these years, never occurred to me. No - I'd not be frying skinless chicken, this was for some gumbo.

I deskinned and deboned about 12lbs of chicken thighs last week. Turned the skin into schmaltz, the bones into stock and then seasoned, vacuum packed and froze the now boneless skinless thighs in dinner sized portions ready to be popped into my immersion circulator when I want them.

My point is, these skills aren't exactly difficult to do at home. Just because you don't do something doesn't mean you can't do something.

I've been cooking since I was a kid. When I was in college or right out of college, it was just easier to order pizza or Chinese. If I was cooking, typically it was plain pasta with cheese or tuna noodle casserole. Only time I actually out effort in was to impress a girl. Linguini with clam sauce, fettucini Alfredo, chicken marsala etc.

I think the desire to cook comes with age, marriage, kids etc.

I believe so. Was dying for it last Friday and could not find a single (non-fast food chain) restaurant with 20 mins of me that served it.

I had never had fried chicken fried in a cast iron pan until I was 18, and had arrived in the US to attend college. Since then, I have gotten to love fried chicken!!!! And, since I did not have any relatives to teach me how, I looked at numerous YouTube videos, and learnt how. I dont know how my pan fried chicken compares to chicken that you guys are used to, but, I love it!!!!
On the issue of younger people and their lack of cooking skills. You know that I belong to the Mormon Church, and I have invited many of my Church friends to my place for simple Indian meals. And, I must say, that I am constantly amazed by these younger couples, mostly BYU graduates who seem to be absolutely unaware about the basics of food. One woman was amazed that I had cooked rice at home. She had previously thought that if one wanted rice, then, the Chinese take-out place was the only place where you could obtain cooked rice!!!!!! Another couple did not recognise potatoes in the pantry. They thought you got cooked potatoes from a take-out place, or you bought a bag of tater-tots at the grocery store. God knows what kind of training or upbringing they got from their parents, they are incredibly stupid.
End of rant, because I know that not all Mormons or people in Utah are as stupid as the two examples I cited.