Eat. Drink. RVA: Recipe: Fried Chicken

My husband is from South Hill, Virginia, which is a small town in Southern Virginia off I-85 near the North Carolina border. His mother, Doris, was from England but she cooked like she was born and bred Southerner and Alan learned at her knee how to make many foods including fried chicken.

I never learned how to make fried chicken, so this was a tutorial for me.

Ode to Doris Crawford Fried Chicken (there are no measurements!)

Ingredients:
A couple of pounds of skinless chicken pieces, breasts and thighs
A paper bag from the grocery store
Whole wheat flour
Leftover stale crackers
Greek yogurt, plain
Salt
Pepper
Mrs. Dash Garlic seasoning
Allspice
Paprika
Oil (we used a combination of peanut, vegetable, and olive although we probably would have just used peanut if we had enough)
Electric skillet and a couple of pans and ideally some type of grate thing to elevate your meat

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 375 F
2. Pour oil into electric skillet set to 350 F
3. Put chicken pieces in a large casserole dish. Heavily season with salt and pepper on each side. Also cover with paprika and the Mrs. Dash. No measuring, just pour it on. You really want to douse it with salt and pepper.
4. Cover the chicken pieces with Greek yogurt.
5. Prepare the paper bag: pour in flour, leftover stale crackers we crumbled (optional), salt, pepper, paprika, Mrs. Dash, and allspice.
6. When the oil is hot, throw in a couple of pieces of chicken into the bag and shake until it is covered. Put the chicken in the oil.
7. Cook/brown on each side. Do not crowd the chicken because my husband said that's bad. Not sure why.
8. Put on a grate thing to drain over a pan to get some of the oil off.
9. Put the chicken into a baking pan and put in the oven for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees. If you have the elevated grates you can put them in the oven as well since more grease will come off during the baking.
10. Take out and let cool so you don't burn your face off.