Fried Chicken at The Kitchen Conservatory

Last week I taught a class on Frying Chicken. Usually I do demonstration classes, but Ruth (she's the techie and scheduler at Kitchen Conservatory) talked me into a participation class. Demonstration classes are easier for me being a control freak as I am-at least in the kitchen. It's pretty hard to control everything in a participation class. It was quite enjoyable.

I started by dividing them into teams of three members each. I chose three different recipes and three different techniques for frying chicken. They started with learning to butcher a chicken. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of this because I was too busy running from team to team and directing their knives-everyone was successful and no lost finger tips. They also had to make an old fashioned creamed corn dish, mashed potatoes (hand mashed and riced), cream gravy, and strawberry applesauce bread.

They had to do an electric deep-fried chicken, a kettle deep-fried chicken over an open flame, and a pan-fried chicken done in a cast iron skillet, in lard. Not surprising to me the favorite chicken was the one pan-fried in lard in the cast iron skillet. We won't worry about cholesterol for this one.

I'll probably repeat this class at some time in the future-who knew so many people don't know how to fry chicken.