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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsThe United States of Fried Chicken
Your double-dredged, battered, spiced, crispy-fried guide to Americas favorite foodhttps://www.eater.com/23167633/best-fried-chicken-america-guide
What does it take for a dish or a food to be considered American? Is there something inherent in the seasonings, the ingredients, or the presentation that makes it ours? Or is it just something most everyones tried, or at least would recognize on a glowing fast-food menu? National dishes are particularly tricky in this country where ones eating habits are so deeply dictated by their individual experience something we know varies widely depending on location, ethnicity, cultural background, socioeconomic status, and plain ol taste. Depending on those variables, your idea of a defining American dish might look like apple pie, macaroni and cheese, a New York slice, a Big Mac, a crunchy taco, chop suey, gumbo, or a Twinkie. But is there, in fact, some singular food that connects all of our vast and varied cultures, across state lines and borders? I would argue yes, there is: a plate of crackling, battered, piping-hot, golden-crispy fried chicken.
Its been said that anywhere a yardbird is found, somebody has probably fried it. And while fried chicken is indeed one of the globes most recognizable feats of cooking, eaten across continents and countries, its most closely associated with the uniquely amorphous culinary canon of this one. Like so many of the things that are considered American, fried chicken is really an amalgamation of traditions and techniques tweaked and perfected to fit particular palates. It is a dish that represents our past and our present as a country of immigrants and outsiders, and has been interpreted and reinterpreted time and time again, whether just to fill a belly, to find comfort, or to feed movements.
The country-fried, Southern-style, deep-fried chicken that has won the hearts of so many Americans was created alongside one of the countrys most horrific atrocities, the transatlantic slave trade, and serves as a reminder that often what gives us joy has deeper, darker origins. The story of how this style of fried chicken came to be is dredged in both European and African cultures. But in the process of the dish becoming one of Americas most popular meals, its history has been erased and weaponized against the people who helped create not only the recipe, but the societies that surround it. Still, fried chicken has endured in Black communities, but also as it connects with the countrys panoply of immigrant populations.
Today, all types of Americans crave glossy Korean fried chicken wings, craggy karaage, tortas stuffed with Milanese cutlets, and juicy morsels of Taiwanese popcorn chicken just as much as a Southern-fried drumstick. Fried chicken has emerged as a tool of reclamation and celebration, an edible emblem of our grand diversity. This collection of stories is part of that celebration. After all, its in telling the tales of our foodways however painful that we reaffirm our own narratives and honor our individuality. By acknowledging how it is that we all came to be eating at this imperfect table together, we are able to understand one another a little better. Fried chicken is American because it represents the trauma of our past but also the hopeful optimism and potential innovation of our future.
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Bayard
(21,805 posts)Beating out burgers? I don't think so. McDonalds vs KFC.
Its okay, but I much prefer my chicken baked or grilled.
Celerity
(42,666 posts)it, chicken, in its many guises (often fried in some away but certainly not limited to that) surpasses beef, and to be more specific, fried chicken surpasses burgers in terms of penetrative levels per group. Burgers probably, on a total consumption level, pass it up, but that is driven by groups that are larger in size, but narrower in diversity. You have many cultural groups in the US who eat far more fried chicken (in all its manifestations) than they do burgers, they just still lag behind the few dominate groups in terms of raw numbers of people atm.
DBoon
(22,288 posts)zanana1
(6,085 posts)That all looks so good to me
yellowdogintexas
(22,119 posts)serve some form of fried chicken.
When the 12th one opened (it moved in to the former location of one of the others), I called my daughter in Phoenix to tell her.
We refer to that street as Chicken Alley. As long as I can get Popeye's or Chicken Express spicy chicken I don't care how many places serve fried chicken.
I am from Kentucky but my least favorite of the big name chicken spots is KFC. My favorite is Popeye's, extra spicy
electric_blue68
(14,619 posts)Now I'm drooling again!
I do really like grilled chicken, but...
Oh, fried chicken!!!
Luckily living in NYC (not since covid) I've gone off and on down, or up to (depending on where I was/am living to various soul food restaurants in Harlem (except for Sylvia's). Also one spot near me when I lived in Brooklyn.
I almost always have fried chicken bc I almost never fry anything at home (other than stir fry in the past w a wok).
And the crusted baked "drier" form of Mac & Cheese. Oh, yes!
Then either potato salad, yams, greens, etc.
Love it, a special treat! 🧡