When in the American South, one must eat fried chicken. This is not negotiable; it is as much a part of the culture as the famed Southern hospitality, serving almost anything in Jello, and Nascar. While Southerners are fond of frying pretty much anything that is edible (pickles, tomatoes, whole turkeys, steak) chicken is the most delicious, and I’m certain that many families have been split in two by vicious feuds about whether it is best to cook it in lard or bacon grease, for how long, is Air Fryer Chicken the way forward, and what sort of weather it is best to eat it in. When faced with 4 weeks in Memphis, Tennessee, I was presented with the perfect opportunity for searching out the perfect specimen of Southern fried chicken.
I took a trip out to the endearingly punctuated restaurant “Gus’s” in the woods of the Memphis suburb town Collierville. This town specialises in ‘southern fried’ chicken, so I was hoping to have a truly authentic fried chicken experience. GQ magazine voted this place one of the top 5 restaurants in the USA worth flying to for a meal. If any place should know how to do southern fried chicken the right way, it must be Gus’s.
From the moment I stepped into the hallway of the restaurant, formerly a home, I knew I was going to have an unforgettable culinary experience. I gazed around at the tasteful chicken themed art adorning the walls and realised the love and passion behind the meal I was about to have. Ireland is doing it completely wrong. Fried chicken is not just a greasy guilty pleasure fit only for 3am post-nightclub hunger pains; it certainly does not deserve to be dumped in a cardboard box along with fat smeared chips. I discovered in Tennessee that when given the respect is deserves, fried chicken can be something truly marvellous. In the South, it is usually paired with brown sugar infused baked beans, coleslaw, and iced tea and I have come to believe that this is the perfect combination for the ultimate in comfort eating.
True Southern fried chicken, such as the type found in Gus’s, is not as heavily battered as the type found in chippers, and is soaked in buttermilk and then slow cooked in a pan to seal in moisture then coated in spiced flour for deep frying. The resulting chicken has a delightfully crunchy exterior coating and the meat within pulls off the bone in satisfying stringy (trust me here, this is a good thing!) pieces: “Good eatin’” as we say down South.
When in Tennessee, do as the Southerners do and get yourself a deep fried hunk of chicken, smother it in gravy like the locals if you dare, and wash it down with some freshly brewed ‘sweet tea’. And remember, fried chicken is a life choice, not just a guilty secret.
