Chicken. One word says it all. It could be said that chicken is served more often and is prepared is more ways than any other meat.

I grew up eating a lot of chicken. Mama always had a pen filled with chickens of all sizes. When she planned to cook chicken for a meal, she would go to the chicken pen, catch that special chicken and ring its neck. She would throw the chicken onto a grassy area and let it flop around until it died. When it was no longer flopping, I would skin this chicken while it was still warm. Chicken at our house was always fresh, never frozen and not even refrigerated. Mama taught me to cut the chicken into eight pieces, one for each of us. We definitely knew which piece of chicken was ours and when the platter was passed around, we never considered taking a piece of chicken that was not ours.

When Mama fried chicken, she did it in a special way. She cut up the chicken and washed each piece. Then, she sprinkled it with salt, covered it with flour and fried in a cast iron skillet filled with fresh cooking oil. Cooking oil was poured through a strainer and saved to fry other foods, but chicken was cooked in a pot of fresh oil, never the second time around.

These days, I don’t have fresh chickens. I purchase my chickens from one of the local grocery stores and usually, they have been frozen. So, in order for them to be tender, I let them soak in buttermilk for an hour or so, sometimes even overnight. This will make chicken tender and juicy on the inside. After you coat your chicken with seasoned flour, let it sit while you heat your cooking oil. Letting your chicken rest for a few minutes before you put it in the hot oil with give it that nice crispy crust. This southern fried buttermilk chicken is great served hot, but it also is good served cold. Even when served cold, it will be tender and juicy on the inside.

Southern Fried Buttermilk Chicken

Ingredients

1 chicken, 3 to 4 pounds, cut into 8 pieces

2 cups buttermilk

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon garlic powder, optional

1 teaspoon onion powder, optional

2 quarts peanut oil or canola oil for frying

Preparation

Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and put into bowl with buttermilk. Cover bowl with lid or plastic wrap and let sit at least one hour, making sure the chicken is submerged in the buttermilk. You can marinate overnight. Combine flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder and set aside. When you are ready to fry your chicken, drain the chicken pieces and add to the flour mixture. Coat the chicken completely with flour mixture shaking off and excess flour. Let your chicken pieces sit while you heat your vegetable oil to 350 degrees.

Drop chicken into hot vegetable oil and brown on both sides. Reduce heat to simmer, cover skillet with lid and cook for 10 minutes. Turn chicken over and cook another 10 minutes or until juices in chicken run clear when pricked with a fork. Remove the lid and cook for 5 minutes longer for a crispy crust or remove immediately if you prefer the outside to be softer. Drain on paper towels, serve warm or pack for a picnic and enjoy cold.

From the scriptures

Spiritual food is essential for all of us, as well as physical food. We enjoy two or three meals every day. We should nourish our mind and feed our spirit daily just as we feed our body. Bible Verses are fabulous spiritual food. We should look forward to reading our Bible daily; just one verse of scripture each day would feed our spirit.

Our Bible verse for this week is 1 Peter 5:6: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”