Fried Chicken or Fried Prairie Dog - You make the call......

Here is the chicken update that a few of you have asked about......

I started at 10:30 am, making sure I had a couple cups of coffee in me, and two (yes,I said two) hours later I was finished. The longest part was cutting up the crazy chicken. I thought for sure somewhere deep in my genetic coding that once I picked up the butcher knife, I would be able to figure out how to cut up a chicken like I had been butchering chickens since man created fire. I was confident...to me it seemed like the legs seemed like a no-brainer, the wings were a given and everything would have a "natural fat line" that I would follow to finish. I started with the legs although mine seemed to be a bit longer than what the Colonel serves. Next the wings, cut and folded - easy. Onto the the body and looking for the "natural line." HA....not so fast Miss Transplanted Southern Belle. Where the hell is the natural line - I don't see anything that would give me the faintest idea of what and where to cut next. So I started hacking and sawing trying my best to re-create semblance of a chicken that would be bucket worthy. Some pieces ended up with no bones, some pieces had no skin, one piece ended up having a long tail, and another that looked liked I had fried a prairie dog. It was a mess - the chicken was really cold, I could barely hold on to the knife because my hands were so slippery, I was doing my best "HazMat" impersonation trying to contain the chicken juice so that I wouldn't cross-contaminate anything. And to top it all off, Grayson kept coming in the kitchen every time she heard me mutter under my breath or when the rogue curse would escape my lips. She just shook her head and rolled her eyes. At one point she said, "This doesn't look good at all." I agreed. It looked like WWII had descended upon the poor chicken. Took me 1 1/2 hours to cut up that poor bird.......and with the bird pieces parts piled in a bowl, I washed my hands and got ready to fry.

Flour - check. Lard - check. Salt and pepper - check. Here is where I should interject a pearl of wisdom.....don't try to flour dredge your chicken on a small paper plate. Flour goes everywhere and I mean everywhere and you can only flour two pieces of chicken at a time. It is here that I seriously begin to reconsider my efforts. No, I have gotten this far - I am going to finish - come hell or high water (which I was feverishly wishing for both). Cast iron skillet out and lard melted. Legs, wings and assorted pieces parts go into the skillet. The only thing that I would suggest is to resist the temptation to flip the pieces before they were ready......I held my patience and waited until a good crispy coating had formed. All pieces fried and draining on paper towels....I was drained as well as covered in flour and splattered grease from my fingertips to my elbows. What a hot mess - and I mean literally.

The kids and husband test taste the chicken and the following were their comments:

Mason:

1. "It is good except for the unexpected bone or tendon when you don't expect it" and;

2. "I underestimated the size of that one piece - there was so much chicken - I couldn't even finish that piece."

Grayson:

1. "Oh dad, you should have heard the words that were coming out of the kitchen when she was cutting it up";

2. "It looks a whole lot better fried and it tastes good."

Chris:

1. "What the heck is this piece??? It looks like a couple of pieces fused together."

And of course my mom wanted an update and I explained all of the above. She then tells me:

1. "I used to put the flour and spices into a paper bag and shook it up. That will keep you from getting flour everywhere and then you just throw the bad away." Nice to know - afterwards.

2. "It shouldn't have taken that long to cut up a bird of that size." Yup - even I figured that out about an hour into it.

3. "Now when I do fried chicken, I buy it already cut up - it is much easier." Uh huh....next time that pre-cut bird has my name written all over.

4. "I can't believe I never taught you how to cut up a chicken." Well, if you taught me to cut it up to look like a chicken from Chernobyl - than you did. If it is suppose to look like a chicken from the Colonel - then you must have taught Sondra or I was definitely not paying attention.

I am glad that I did it, but the next time I get a whole chicken (feel free to laugh here), I am going to cut it straight down the back and bake that bad boy just like Tina told me to do. And just a shout out to my grandma (God rest her soul) - thank goodness you didn't trap and skin buffalo....who knows what kind of mess that would have been.