Easy Perfect Fried Chicken Recipe

Let me start by saying that the title of this post is a lie. There is no such thing as a perfect recipe for fried chicken or any other dish for that matter. There are way too many herbs, spices and seasonings in the world and people have such differing taste that to say “perfect” is just so much BS.

That being said, there are methods you can use to improve the taste and quality of your fried chicken no matter what seasonings you prefer. Being an Alabama Boy by birth and rearing I know a little about what makes good chicken and what follows is what I personally consider to be the best, fried chicken recipe, around. No salt or 17 herbs and spices required, I think you’ll be surprised how simple it is.

What you will need:

·         1  Whole Chicken cut into Frier parts

·         1 Cup Water

·         1 Cup Patis (Fish Sauce)  

·         1 Cup Cane Vinegar

·         1 Bulb of Garlic, crushed and rough cut

·         1.5 tsp Black Pepper Crushed

·         Plain Flour

·         Oil of your choice

Marinade

To make the marinade mix the water, vinegar, Patis, garlic and pepper in a large bowl or pot. Add the chicken,cover and refrigerate overnight.

As an alternative, if you are short on time, you can place ingredients over a medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Allow to boil 15 minutes and then set off. Let sit 15 minutes and then remove chicken and allow to cool.

Breeding and Cooking

·         Remove chicken from marinade and let drain.

·         Bread with your plain flour.

·         Fry in a deep fat fryer or skillet with your chosen oil.

·         Serve, Simple

You will notice that there is no seasoning used outside of the marinade. The beauty of this fried chicken recipe is the flavor cooks from the meat into the breading, not the other way around.

This method of cooking fried chicken allows the flavor to reach all the way to the bone, not just in the crust or skin, making the last bite, as delicious as the first, without having to have a fancy pressure fryer like they use in restaurants.  

Give this fried chicken recipe a try and let me know what you think. As always your questions and comments are welcome. You can add them below or reach me directly through the contact gadget at the top of the page.

3 Essential Tools for Traditional Asian Cooking

As a hardcore foodie who loves everything from growing food to consuming it, I am often amazed at how complicated some people try to make cooking. I have seen more than one kitchen that was stocked with enough gadgets to qualify as a research facility, but couldn’t produce a decent sandwich, much less a meal worth eating.

That is one of the things I love about traditional Asian food. It is all about bold, balanced flavors, produced quickly and with a minimum of fuss and with just a few basic tools. In truth after spending years living here, I have decided that a good Asian Chef can produce “Michelin Star” quality food with only 3 basic kitchen tools.

Wok and Lid

By Mats Stafseng Einarsen - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1839129

You probably saw this one coming, but the truth is every Asian Cookset should begin with a good quality Wok. It doesn’t matter if you are cooking Chinese, Thai or Filipino Food the wok is the standard pan you will use most often.

When choosing a wok, don’t be tempted by nonstick woks. The temperatures that true Asian cooking is performed at, will not only destroy them but can present health hazards to you.

What you want is a good quality cast iron, steel or aluminium wok. A cast iron and steel wok will hold heat better but take longer to get hot and are heavier than aluminium. An aluminium wok will heat much faster and be easier to handle, being much lighter.

Which is best depends on what you are cooking and personal style? I suggest trying all three and seeing what works best for you with different dishes.

Bamboo Steamer

By chidorian - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1290288

In most Asian cultures ovens are rare. Instead, most of their baked goods and bread are either grilled or steamed. In fact, many Asian chefs can cook an entire meal in a stacked bamboo steamer. You could consider the steamer as the slow cooker of the Asian world.

Yes, you can get metal and even an electric steamer, but remember we are talking traditional here and to be honest, there is something about food steamed in bamboo that just taste better. Kind of like the difference in a burger cooked over an open fire instead of fried in a skillet only to the tenth degree. Bamboo itself adds a special flavor to the food, unlike any other found.

Mortar and Pestle

Often seen but it seems rarely used in many western kitchens is a classic tool that is another must have to cook authentic Asian Cuisine. In the Asian kitchen, the classic Mortar and Pestle are still very widely used to do everything from crush and grind spices to creating a wide variety of paste that can be used as seasonings or served as stand-alone dishes.

In my personal kitchen, I have three of varying sizes and made of different materials. My Stone mortar and Pestle,  I use for cracking and grinding hard spices such as peppercorns and making fresh cornmeal; Yes, I make my own from dried corn, or for making curry and saffron paste. It excels in this area because it doesn’t hold flavors, is easy to clean and stands up to hard use.

Our Wood mortar and pestle is perfect for crushing the herbs we dry to make our homemade teas. It’s softer yet more textured surfaces are great for blending and crushing the delicate leaves without bruising them and our  Bamboo mortar and pestle is reserved for making pastes like bagoong or grinding dry fish for seasoning rice dishes. It has seen many years of use for this purpose, in my wife’s family and is well seasoned with a saltwater taste. :-)

Preventing Deer, Rabbits and Other Four Legged Pest From Eating Your Garden. ORGANICLY!

 Part 4 in our series on chemical free pest control

Photo: http://www.ForestWander.com

 

If you live in the city, practice urban or container gardening this post might or might not be of interest to you, but if you live in most suburbs or out in the country you know that it doesn’t take long for pest, of the four legged kind, to completely destroy a garden plot or even turn a profitable crop into a total loss.

Four Legged Garden Pest Eat How Much?

An average member of the deer family will eat from 5 to 15 pounds of greens a day, depending on the species. This may seem like a lot of food, but when you take body size into account they are nothing compared to rabbits.

A mature cottontail, the most common wild rabbit in the U.S., will eat 1.25 pounds a day and his cousin, the black-tailed jackrabbit, eats almost nonstop and can consume over 6 pounds of forage every 24 hours. When you consider that an average rabbit colony will contain around 15-20 rabbits you can see that letting rabbits have free access to your garden is about the same as letting a full grown cow graze your greens.

So, how do you keep the grazing deer and the ravaging rabbit from consuming your delectable garden treats before you have a chance to? It is easier than you think. Just follow these handy tips to keep your garden safe, chemical free and totally organic.

Natural Deer Repellents

Deer, for all the damage they can cause, are actually one of the easier animals to deter from your garden and being creatures of habit, they will normally stay with their new food source and stay away once deterred.

Here are a few things that will help if you have a deer problem.

·         In a pump sprayer mix one whole egg, a quarter cup of water and an ounce of hot sauce and spray it on your plants. This mix will withstand light rains because the egg sticks to the leaves.

·         For larger volume applications, mix the following ingredients:

o   1 Cup Milk

o   2 Gallons Water (8 Liters)

o   2 T Cooking Oil

o   2 T Liquid Detergent

o   2 Whole Eggs

o   Spray it on your plants.

·         Even the most persistent deer will become discouraged and look elsewhere after a time. Once they're in the habit of feeding elsewhere, you can let up on the spraying regimen.

·         Place human hair in small cheesecloth sacks and hang around your garden. The scent of the human hair is repellent to deer of all types.

Rabbit And Rodent Proofing Your Garden

Photo: Koenigsegg

 

Rabbits and Rodents are allergic to peppermint and will avoid it like the plague. To pest proof your garden, plant borders of peppermint as a barrier or soak rags in peppermint oil and hang around your garden to keep it pest free.

Since I love mint tea the first option obviously gets my vote.

Creating a 'Mini' Insectary in Your Gardenm (3rd article in our organic best control series)

The idea of intentionally inviting insects into your garden may sound a little crazy to some. That is because, most of us have been raised in a chemical-laden world, where new and improved (sic), man-made has been praised and the natural demonized as inefficient and wasteful. The funny part of this is that the exact opposite is true. Man has never developed a system that worked with the elegance that we find in nature.

Chemical pesticides not only poison and kill insects indiscriminately, they wash into our rivers and streams causing environmental damage and leech into our groundwater supply where they have been found  to contribute to Malignant lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma and many other forms of cancer.

By learning to work with nature using methods like building Insectaries in our gardens we not only protect our plants in the most natural way possible, we protect ourselves and the planet that we will leave behind to our kids and grandkids.

What is an Insectary

For our purposes, an insectary is a small area of your garden, set aside and planted with plant species that will draw and hold beneficial insects. 

The idea is to invite these predator species into our gardens and then let them do what nature intended them to do, eat the pests that eat our plants.

How to get started

The best method that I have found is to alternate small islands of insectary plants with your normal crops.

If you garden in traditional rows, set aside a portion of every second or third row for a few feet of predator drawing plants or plant them in islands throughout your garden.

If you have beds of plants like a herb garden or traditional flower beds found around most homes, reserve a 4 sq ft area, every 15 to 20 feet around your beds or in the center of larger beds.

What Insectary Plants to Choose?

Every geographical area and type of crop has its own set of damaging garden pests to worry about so it is very difficult to give a blanket answer to this question.

What we can do is supply you with the information you will need to make your own choices.

Garden Pest	Prey Insects
Aphids	Aphidius, Aphidoletes, Hoverflies, Lacewings, Ladybugs, Pirate Bugs
Caterpillars	Ground Beetles
Fungus Gnats	Beneficial Mites
Grubs	Ground Beetles
Insects Pest Eggs	Damsel Bugs (Nabidae)
Mealybugs	Hoverflies
Mites	Lacewings, Ladybugs, Pirate Bugs
Moth, Beetle And Fly Larvae	Wasps (parasitic)
Scale	Pirate Bugs, Lacewings
Slugs	Ground Beetles
Soft bodied Insects	Lacewings
Spidermite	Beneficial Mites, Dicyphus
Thrips	Beneficial Mites, Dicyphus, Pirate Bugs
Whiteflies	Dicyphus, Pirate Bugs, Wasps (parasitic)

Beneficial Insect	Plant
Aphidius	Achillea Filipendulina, Lupin, Sunflowers
Aphidoletes	Lupin
Beneficial Mites	Helianthus Annulus, Shasta Daisy
Damsel Bugs (Nabidae)	Fennel
Dicyphus	Digitalis
Ground Beetles	Amaranthus
Hoverflies	Convolvulus Minor, Queen Anne's Lace, Iberis Umbellata, Statice, Lupin, Parsley, Pincushion Flower, Yarrow
Lacewings	Alyssum, Dill, Angelica Gigas, Coreopsis, Cosmos Bipinnatus, Queen Anne's Lace, Fennel, Tansy
Ladybugs	Achillea Filipendulina, Dill, Convolvulus Minor, Queen Anne's Lace, Fennel, Tansy, Yarrow
Pirate Bugs	Helianthus Annulus, Shasta Daisy, Sunflower
Tachinid flies	Alyssum, Lemon Balm, Parsley,
Wasps (parasitic)	Coreopsis,  Cosmos Bipinnatus, Dill, Statice, Lemon balm, Parsley, Pincushion Flower, Sunflower, Yarrow

Insectary Secrets

Different insects are obviously attracted to different types of plants and have different environmental requirements. Ground Beetles need to have ample ground cover and low growing plants to thrive and Lacewings like to have high, shady, protected areas to lay their eggs. Because of this, it is best to plant a variety of plants in your Insectary Plots.

Mix and match ground covers like clover and vetch with low-growing herbs like thyme, dill and various mints and then add taller composite flowers such as daisies and chamomile. The more variety you have, the better.

Patients

The other secret to growing an insectary and using predatory insects to keep your garden pest free is to remember that you are working with a natural process. Even if you order bugs or eggs online you are not going to see a dramatic change overnight.

Nature takes time to work. The best you can do to hurry it along is to seed and provide a proper environment for your little pest control agents to live in and then wait.

On the good side, once you have your Garden Insectary in place, all you have to do is maintain it year to year and your plants will stay protected without any further expense or work. As long as you provide them a good home, your little worker bugs will keep your garden pest free and even help enrich your soil with their waste.