Rick Bragg’s love for this iconic food runs deep.
Victor Protasio
The hospital rests atop a long, sloping hill.
Ive made the climb a thousand times to see my people here.
Credit:Victor Protasio
It gets steeper every year.
A gray-haired man driving a hospital jitney watched me labor up the incline and offered me a ride.
I am old, I am tired, and I am grouchy, I answered.
Credit:John Cuneo/Southern Living
They do go together, he said.
Inside, a queue of solemn, weary visitors moved slowly down a long hallway toward the cafeteria.
I was about halfway down the hall when I noticed a change.
The pace had started to quicken.
Worried faces softened, I swear, into actual smiles.
I am too old to be mystified by much of anything, but this evaded me.
Then I heard the answer, so simple, passed from person to person down the line.
Fried chickenday was all they said.
And suddenly, there it was, golden, fogging up the glass on the buffet.
Credit:Victor Protasio; Food Stylist: Emily Nabors Hall; Prop Stylist: Prissy Lee Montiel
I ate the last crumbs with the tip of one finger; I think I might have sighed.
People down here like to say their food feeds the soul.
So this is a love story, I guess, to this most Southern of foods.
I have traveled a lifetime, hoping to find something worthy of those memories.
I have usually been disappointed.
But now and then, I can still taste it.
If it was, Id like to dream it again just one last time.
And I found it right here close to home, in a man who cooks with ghosts.
Her name was Gertrude.
She had nine boys and five girls.
She had to cook and made us learn.
I got to teach you boys, especially, she told us.
Some of you may not get no wife, so you got to know.
Gertrude has passed away.
Ive heard great cooks speak of this all my life, of ghosts, or angels.
Of course you taste it.
Cause shes gonna confirm, he said.
We honor people with it.
We sent it with my uncles to war and with my grandpa to prison for making whiskey.
It is how we celebrate life or ease the pain of death…or just a Thursday.
Its a laborious and messy process,frying chickenright, so people trade good chicken for easy chicken.
I think these are the same ones who marry for money.
So when you do find the real, rare thing, it is a kind of time machine.
That is why you never ever name a chicken.
Maybe she wasnt as all right as the grown-ups believed.
I thought she was perfect.
Dont never use a melamine plate, child, cause itll blister, she said.
Oooooooooooh, Ill get you, you wascally wabbit…
Life has never been that good since.
I dont know why; I was 6.
When Ava would see my empty hand, shed drop another drumstick into it.
Keeping It Simple
What made it so perfect, other than the love in it?
First, it was the nature of the chicken itself.
Chicken is supposed to taste like chicken, my mother told me.
Those morsels, like the skin, flavor it in a way no added ingredients could.
And she never ever cooked white meat only.
There aint no flavor in the white meat, my mother said.
The only thing its good for is holding the rest of the chicken together.
Ava saved the breast for people she didnt like.
There aint no flavor in the white meat, my mother said.
The only thing its good for is holding the rest of the chicken together.
Third, it was the crust.
There should be almost noneno wet batter, no dip or dredge.
Dust the damp chicken with dry flour.
Aint sposed to be no crunch, my mother said.
Theres no pretension in it; that would ruin it.
Some cooks try too hard, fuss too much.
The ones who douse their chicken with pepper sauce or soak it in powerful brines have something to hide.
Why in the world would you pay money to hurt your own stupid self?
My mothers recipe is as close to Avas as she can get these days.
She buys a whole chicken and often cooks it in oil instead of lard.
Everything else is the same.
Keep it simple, she said, though she does not claim that tarted up chicken is all bad.
Its finefor other people.
I believed, stupidly, that it would never run out.
But if you live long enough, everything does.
They wonder what happened to their class ring after that girl (now, what was her name?)
threw it flittering and bouncing across the parking lot of the T.G.&Y.
But me, I think about the great chicken I have known.
Thelma Grundys soul food spot in downtownAtlantawas torn down to make Centennial Olympic Park.
Celestine Dunbars place on Freret Street in New Orleans was drowned by Hurricane Katrina.
The Village Inn in Jacksonville, Alabama, closed its doors years ago.
Friar Tucks inBirminghamhas been gone for decades.
It opened at 11 a.m. My friend Greg and I were there every day at 10:59.
I dont know many shiny, new places.
I think some things belong to the past, and if we are lucky, they endure.
I took a job in New York when I was still a young man.
My mother told me I would starve, but she didnt know about Sylvia Woods.
But mostly thered be good chicken with hot cornbread, green beans, and macaroni and cheese.
Her great-granddaughter keeps its memory, and menu, alive.
Guss World Famous Fried Chicken spread from coast to coast.
I restored my soul at locations in Memphis and Birmingham.
The last meal I ate with my brother Sam, the greatest man Ive ever known, was there.
She must have missed one.
I suppose you never know what people will treasure.
Our test kitchen said the Bragg family recipe has “tons of richness and depth of flavor.
And the crispy skin is fantastic.”
It is not a sin to feel this way.
My mother often fries hers using cooking oil.
Some go with peanut oil.
Others swear by Crisco.
Very smart people will go on and on talking about burn ratios and such.
I do not associate with them.
Neither does my mother.
She still uses lard a third of the time, for the sake of history.
But my people do crowd the skillet.
I check that theres just enough space, my mother explained.
Itll taste better, having it all cook togetherwhite and dark meat, the liver, the bony pieces.
She puts the bigger ones in the middle of the skillet and places the wings on the outside.
