Prelude: I prepared the following food at work today, not my normal place of cheffin’. Probably a better day at work than most, eh?
On March 15th 2004 a special young lad by the name of John Bell paid us a visit here at Meathenge from Mobile Alabama. He’s known for quite a handful of things, one of which being Southern Fried Chicken. I want to get this straight and clear right now. I’m not making Emeril’s chicken, nor am I making chicken that you make. I WANNA MAKE WHAT JOHN BELL MAKES !!! And after 3 posts on Meahenge, I have yet to accomplish this. If you go check out March 15th’s entry you’ll get to SEE what his craggy lava crunch chicken looks like. And what it tastes like? You’ll just have to imagine.

Here we see Meathenge Labs set up at work, perfection.
And so will I, for now. This is attempt #4 and the best so far. The other attempts were just fine, but NOT what John makes. His crust explodes in your mouth and sends chickenny flavor all over the damned place. Even cold the crust is crunchy, a really good crunchy. What got me closer this time was the fact I used vegetable oil and not corn oil. Corn oil is just too damned heavy, at least for what I’m up to. The vegetable oil got me much closer and I could see I was getting there with how the crust appeared. But, as it turns out my damned fryer doesn’t get above 323 degrees! Mama was right, as she mentioned this weekend. I just wished I would have known earlier this year, it’s the damned low temp fryer that isn’t allowing me to realize that crazy crunchy crust.
Oddly enough this fried chicken process is really easy and straight forward, I just can’t do it. Milk (2% is fine) and a few eggs moved about. Unbleached white flour with a wet, dry, wet, dry or so with the dipping. He overloads the fryer and constantly pokes and moved the chickies about. No skin on the chicken and no salt or pepper or anything. Really. Simple pleasures.

Under that tasty crust is a chicken wing, no really. MAN, FRIED CHICKEN IS SO DAMNED GOOD !!!
So, next time you’ll see a new fryer in these pictures. Hey, speaking of which, if anyone has a commercial deep fryer to donate to M.H. Labs, give me an email, drbiggles at cyberbilly dot com. Otherwise, I’ll be getting a consumer grade rig.
I’m right behind ya there John, I’ll be right with you in no time. Even with the voodoo spell you used to render my fryer’s temperature useless.
Xo Xo