Finger Lickin' Good

I owe a debt of gratitude to one Harland Sanders -- an impeccably dressed Southern Gentleman who helped bring an end to an arduous, 30-year personal search that literally spanned the breadth of the country: the search to unlock the mystery behind the quintessential American dish.

The "Colonel," (a distinction Mr. Sanders acquired not through military service but via a special culinary honor bestowed upon him by the Governor of Kentucky), discovered what is widely believed to be the holy grail of all poultry -- the perfect fried chicken.

In the 1930's, Colonel Sanders owned and operated a small filling station in Corbin, Kentucky. Cooking out of his home kitchen in the back of the station, the Colonel would offer up plates of good 'ole Southern fried chicken prepared in the traditional manner using pork lard for the cooking fat and a cast-iron skillet.

Yet cooking fried chicken the old-fashioned way took time, up to 45 minutes to fry a whole bird using two skillets.

The truth behind Colonel Sander's discovery is not in what has been marketed as "a blend of 11 secret herbs and spices" -- a recipe that to this day is guarded under lock and key. No, although the herbs and spices are an important element in KFC, the real truth behind the Colonel's perfect fried chicken lay in the cooking process. A process that at the time was dubbed "Broasting" -- a combination of deep-frying and pressure steam cooking.

The Colonel came upon a new cookery pot named the "pressure cooker." The pressure cooker is a deep pot made of heavy gauge steel and finished with chrome. The lid of the pot holds a metal arm used for tightening the lid down onto the pot, creating an inescapable vacuum seal between pot and lid. A small hole in the lid allows for the release of a small gasp of steam during the cooking process.

The Colonel found that the pressure cooker was the perfect vessel for his fried chicken recipe. The result was an incredibly juicy chicken covered with a savory and crisp golden brown skin, all served up in a fraction of the time it took to cook chicken using the cast-iron skillet method.

Over the course of the next decade, the Colonel amassed a loyal following of local customers who came just for the fried chicken.

In the early 1950's, the Colonel, now a man of 65 years, hit the road, literally, going door to door frying up chickens in his pressure cooker at Mom and Pop roadside restaurants. Legend has it that the Colonel made a deal that he would only take a nickel for every chicken sold using his special recipe and cooking technique. Thus, the birth of what we now know in the world of fast food as the "franchise." Kentucky Fried Chicken shops soon dotted the American landscape.

The commercial "Broaster" found in most supermarkets today.

Pressure cookers were not unknown throughout the restaurant industry at the time, and a number of entrepreneurs were quick to claim that their broasted chicken was the "first" or "best."

One Mr. L.A.M. Phelan, inventor of such prodigious mechanical devices as the automatic gasoline pump and automatic toilet, tinkered with a design for a commercial grade pressure cooker that would duplicate the qualities of the smaller pressure cooker employed by Harland Sanders, yet large enough on a commercial scale for use in supermarkets and institutional kitchens.

Mr. Phelan's device became the foundation in 1952 of "The Broaster Company." To this day, the Beloit, Wisconsin Company adamantly protects its registered trademark "Genuine Broasted Chicken®." The company proclaims in part that their chickens are "cooked under pressure in their own natural juices, limiting the absorption of cooking oil while searing the chicken with a golden, crispy-crunchy coating." In fact, they are right. Their chicken is very good. Broaster company pressure cookers are found in virtually every supermarket deli kitchen in America.

The Broaster Company claims that pressure cooked chicken has 44% more moisture than deep-fried chicken and up to 70% less fat.

My own search for the perfect fried chicken began in the 1960's on a two-lane highway in Salem, Oregon at the "Original Broasted Chicken" drive-in. No doubt the owners had been courted by the Colonel, but decided to go it on their own.

My mother would often stop there to collect the fixin's for Sunday dinner-fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw and biscuits. The drive-in served as a "scheduled meal break" stop for riders on the Greyhound and Trailways bus line routes up to Portland. A motel and pool shared the same lot as the "Broaster," and travelers could check-in for a room, pick up dinner and buy a bus ticket, all at the restaurant counter.

My fried chicken journey then pointed East to Aunt Bertie's home in Twin Falls, Idaho. Bertie was somewhat of an eccentric woman, parking the family's 1924 Cadillac in the garage one day in 1936 after her Mother died. The car was kept in mint condition for the next 30 years, yet never driven another mile.

When I was a kid in the 60's, we would spend two weeks every Summer with my Grandfather and Aunt Bertie. Bertie would pack us a picnic lunch for the drive back to Oregon, deviled eggs, bags of Frito's, preserved watermelon rind pickles and cold fried chicken. I never took the time to ask her what her secret was, but I remember it tasted just like the "Broaster" chicken in Salem. What was the missing clue to making such heavenly chicken?

It would be another 25 years, the 1990's, before I would set out across the country in search of the secret to the Colonel's broasted chicken.

The restaurant is the epitome of a tourist trap, detailed in the local guidebooks as the home of "true Southern cuisine."

Decorated with an assortment of 1970's kitsch under the guise of a Southern mansion à la Gone with the Wind, in living Technicolor. The featured item on the menu is golden fried chicken prepared the old fashioned way in a "seasoned cast-iron skillet." The waitress tells us that the fried chicken is made from scratch and takes up to 30 minutes to prepare.

Aunt Pittypat's, chicken, and most skillet-fried chicken for that matter, is different from the Colonel's. Because it is cooked in an open skillet, moisture rises from the pan into the open air. Thus, skillet-cooked chicken tends to be drier than their broasted cousins who are cooked within an intense steam bath. Alas, while good, Pittypat's chicken was not as good as the Colonel's.

I then turned North (though not Northward enough to be called Yankee), and into the rolling green hills of the Great Smoky Mountains of rural Tennessee.

This is truly a country scene out of the movie "Deliverance." One expects a boy in bib overalls to break out his banjo and strum a chorus of "Dueling Banjos."

I don't recall the name of the place, only the sign out front that read "Real Southern Home Cooking." The restaurant was in a real "dry" county -- not only did they NOT serve liquor of any kind, patrons were barred from even bringing in their own flask of whiskey. A practice common in other "dry" counties in Tennessee. I have learned however, that liquor only tends to numb one's taste buds for the meal to come -- another round of Fried Chicken.

Although the décor was more sublime than that of Aunt Pittypat's, it had more of the appearance of an indoor Southern picnic with red-checked tablecloths, paper napkins, and the ubiquitous fan to keep the sweltering heat and humid air from getting stale.

The fried chicken was prepared in the same manner as Aunt Pittypat's, fried up in a heavy cast iron skillet. There was nothing memorable about the Tennessee fowl, just good Southern fried chicken. Again, not as good as the broasted birds cooked by the Colonel or Aunt Bertie.

I made a short swing further North into the bluegrass country of Shelbyville, Kentucky on what would prove to be the final leg of my journey.

This is beautiful country, just as you would imagine from picture postcards: undulating hills of green grass and miles of fencing. Millions of dollars of thoroughbred mares and foals romp in the pastures. Yet I was drawn to this small Kentucky town not for equine pursuits but to dine at the temple of Colonel Sander's creation, the Claudia Sanders Dinner house.

The dinner house is named for the Colonel's wife and it has gone through a few incarnations due to age and a recent devastating fire. Although the building is new, the menu has withstood the vagaries of time. Meals are served family style and the platters of fried chicken are accompanied by baked apples, harvest beets, green beans, mock oysters, corn pudding, breaded tomatoes, creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, gravy, cornbread and buttermilk biscuits. There are always at least 3 pies or cobblers for dessert, and who could go without that other Southern treat: sweetened iced tea.

The fried chicken was crispy and bursting with savory juices -- just like the broasted chicken of my childhood days, and exactly as the colonel had intended. The surroundings were different, the chicken the same, and delicious. Here it was, at last, the same chicken I ate at the bus stop in Salem, on Aunt Bertie's porch in Twin Falls, and now the dinner house in Shelbyville. Would I be able to hold onto this re-discovered taste? How could I make this lush chicken at home?

Now that I knew the secret, the cooking technique, I had to procure a pressure cooker. Unfortunately, the world of home pressure cookers has changed since the Colonel first started frying chickens in the 1930's. A hunger for more "healthy" foods has resulted in a field littered with pressure cookers that are not engineered to withstand the rigors of deep-frying under pressure.

Yet there is one company that remains, the "Fagor" company of Spain, which is the only manufacturer in the world that produces a pressure cooker that can be used to broast chicken. It was my trusted friend the Internet that introduced me to this beautiful device. It comes in a variety of sizes, but I found the 8 ½ quart model the perfect size for holding eight pieces of chicken.

You cannot buy the Fagor pressure cooker directly from the factory, but there are a number of kitchen-ware vendors that sell them online.

First, let us dispense with those silly myths we have heard bandied about the safety of pressure cookers. No, your pressure cooker will not explode, spraying hot grease and fried chicken on the walls. Follow the directions and you will have fail-safe broasted chicken every time.

My pressure cooker came with a video that clearly demonstrated how to use the cooker. (The video was quite comical, two ladies at a booth at a State Fair, barking out "it slices, dices, chops and mops.").

I would advise doing a few test runs to familiarize yourself with the pressure cooker. Fill the pressure cooker pot with about 2" of water, and then bring it to a boil on the stove. Slide the lid of the pressure cooker on top of the pot, then tighten it down. Don't force down the lid too tight, just snug. Make sure the pressure valve on top of the lid is on. As pressure builds up inside the pot, you will notice a wisp of steam coming out of the pressure valve. This is normal. You may also notice a small amount of steam coming from under the lid. Not to worry, as the seal on the lid expands over time and use, it will create a vacuum and this small amount of steam will no longer escape.

Now you are ready to make chicken the Colonel's way.

Canola oil or vegetable oil works best as the frying fat. Solid fats like shortening or lard don't work as well in a pressure cooker because when combined with the steam in the pressure cooker they tend to leave the chicken with a heavy, almost gluey taste.

I start by soaking the chicken pieces in a salt-water bath for about one hour. This acts as a "brine", drawing blood out of the chicken and tenderizing the meat.

Now we need to make our own "blend of 11 special herbs and spices." Do not pay attention to those KFC rip-off recipes you just pulled off the internet. They don't come close to duplicating the Colonel's best. Experiment with your own blend of spices to add to the flour. For crispy chicken, add enough water to the flour to make a runny batter.

Heat about 2" of frying oil to the pot. Using a candy thermometer, heat the oil to about 375º . Drain the chicken pieces and dredge them in the seasoned flour or batter. Gently place the chicken into the pot and let them deep-fry 2 minutes.

Now carefully slide the lid of the pressure cooker onto the pot. Gently tighten down the lid until it is snug, don't go too far or you will break the screws.

Let the chicken go about 12 minutes.

Carefully pull up on the pressure valve on top of the lid. A small burst of steam will release the pressure from inside the pot. Let this steam release about one minute, and then gently unscrew the lid from the pot. Remove the lid from the pot.

Using tongs, remove the chicken pieces from the pressure cooker and place them on a rack to drain. I like to let the chicken cool for at least 20 minutes before serving lest your tongue be met with a scalding burst of hot chicken juices.

And so the trek was over, I had found fried chicken nirvana. Hundreds of birds lay in my wake, yet I again tasted that same chicken that graced our table in Salem, in Twin Falls and at the Colonel's dinner house in Shelbyville.

A testament to the Colonel's legendary status was that his body lay in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol as people mourned the passing of the King of Fried Chicken. And I too give thanks to the man who left us with a legacy of chicken that is "Finger Lickin' Good." God rest his soul.

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