Armstead's perfect Fried Chicken

In the movie 'The Help', Minnie the Maid, wonderfully played by actress Octavia Spencer, made the statement that there is something about Fried Chicken that makes everyone feel good. Or something like that. Never have truer words been spoken. We're talking real live, authentic, home brewed fried chicken over here. While KFC is decent chicken and all, if you have more than four pieces in a sitting you're not going to be feeling real good for a while. What you may not know is that your boy Armstead, that's me, makes arguably the greatest fried chicken wing in the history of existence of the universe. Arguably. Unlike KFC, if you eat twenty of Armstead's chicken wings, which is recommended for health reasons, the only thing you will be thinking about is that twenty first chicken wing. For real. And here's how it's done.

The ingredients are simple. Grab about a dozen chicken wings, obviously. Not dings, but full wings. This isn't BW3. The fatter the wing the better. Get yourself about three cups of flour, some popcorn salt (found at most dollar stores), onion power, garlic powder and black pepper. You'll need about a cup of hot sauce... not Frank's or Louisiana because it's too thick, but something they sell at the dollar store that's more watery, and make sure you get the hottest available. It won't make the finished product hot, but it will integrate the flavor better. And you'll also need about a cup of soy sauce. And one of those empty Country Crock butter tubs. Anything will do, but I prefer those.

The key to this is the hot sauce, soy sauce wash. Others use an egg wash, I use this. Put the hot sauce and the soy sauce in a bowl, mix it up real good and drop you wings in the wash and roll them around real good like.

With the wings still in the wash, put your flour in the tub, cover the flour with a coating of the popcorn salt... don't go heavy on this... then a covering of onion powder and a covering of garlic powder, then a good five shakes of the black pepper. Shake it all up.

When frying, I use a deep fryer. Personally, when I batter my chicken, which this recipe isn't, I pan fry in my skillet, but when flouring the chicken I use a deep fryer. Not everybody has an electric deep fryer, so pan frying does work, just be very careful if you've never done it. Too much vegetable oil, pan frying and an electric stove set too high=house fire. And another note, the older the oil your using, the better the chicken will be. Brand new vegetable oil will make for a beautiful looking piece of chicken, just a little less flavor.

So your soaked chicken is well covered in the wash, you pull it out of the wash, drop it in flour mix and shake it all up. At this point your chicken is potentially great fried chicken, but the key to realizing that potential is in the actual frying, and that's when things get tricky for the uninitiated. If you have a decent deep fryer a lot of the guess work in frying is removed from the equation, but as we pointed out, not everybody has one. So you get your oil nice and hot, if it's a gas stove I'd put it on medium, hell if I know what to do with an electric stove since I despise them,but if a small drop of water dances on the oil, it's generally ready to fry.

Drop your chicken in the oil, I have no time restrictions for you since it has to pass your personal eye test, but I know you know what good Fried Chicken looks like. If you pan fry, make sure you flip your chicken. Once the eye test has been passed, drop your chicken on a paper towel to soak up the extra oil... expensive paper towels since cheap ones will leave paper on your chicken... no one wants that. And always eat a piece first to make sure it's okay before you continue on with the rest of the frying process. Just in case you need to tweak your flour mixture or adjust the heat on the oil. But please, stop at one or no else will get any. You've been warned.

There you go, best fried chicken wing ever. I can't tell you if it works with other pieces of the bird because all I ever fry is wings. I use my rotisserie for the rest of the bird, and if someone makes a movie about rotisserie chicken, I'll give up that awesome recipe too.