Blue Ridge Country March/April 2021 - 30

Plates: CLASSIC RECIPES
Black-Iron Skillet Fried
Chicken and Gravy

For more great
mountain recipes,
please go to
BlueRidgeCountry.
com/Recipes.

This is how our grandmothers
fried chicken.
3 ½ -4-pound whole chicken,
cut up
¼ cup whole fat buttermilk
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
½ to ¾ cup either all-purpose
flour, self-rising flour, or a mixture
of both (We do a mixture)

Shirley Sharpe's
Cornbread Salad

Oil for frying

Gravy:

There are two restaurants
near where we live that serve
boardinghouse style food and do it
very well: The Farmer's Daughter in
Chuckey, Tennessee, and Shirley's
in Hampton, Tennessee. Both serve
cornbread salad.
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup ranch dressing

2 to 3 tablespoons pan drippings
and oil
2 to 3 tablespoons flour
1 ½ to 2 cups 2% or whole milk (if
gravy is too thick, add more milk)
Jill Sauceman's pan-fried chicken is made the
way her grandmother made it.

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 large cucumber
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1 green pepper
1 stalk celery
2 tablespoons sweet pickle juice
1 pan baked cornbread
Mix mayonnaise, ranch dressing, apple
cider vinegar, sugar and celery seed in
a bowl. Chop up cucumber, onion, tomatoes, green pepper and celery and
add to bowl. Add pickle juice and mix.
Crumble cooled cornbread and pour
mixture over it. Slightly mix without
stirring.

30

BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

O

ur parents and grandparents
rarely used cookbooks. Their
recipes were instinctual, inherited or improvisational.
And sometimes a combination of all three. As children,
we were careful kitchen observers. About 25 years ago, we started
committing those techniques to paper as
best we could. And as we tasted dishes
prepared by friends, we were quick to
ask for their recipes, too-sometimes
learning that they had never been documented before. We are now writing a
cookbook of our own that will be filled
with flavors shared by family and friends
over the years.

Salt and pepper to taste
Place chicken pieces in a large
bowl and drizzle with buttermilk, turning pieces until all are lightly coated. (The
buttermilk helps the flour to adhere to the
chicken.) Cover and let rest in the refrigerator for ½ hour or until ready to fry.
When ready to fry, place about ⅛- to ¼-inch
of oil in a 10 " or 12 " black-iron skillet
(enough to coat the bottom of the skillet). Remove chicken from the refrigerator.
Sprinkle top of chicken pieces with half the
salt and pepper, then turn the pieces and
sprinkle with the other half. Next, sprinkle
the chicken with the flour, tossing until all
pieces of chicken are coated. The chicken
should look more dry than wet and sticky. If
sticky, add more flour.
Heat the oil on a medium high setting. Let
floured chicken rest in the bowl while the oil
heats in the skillet. It's ready for frying when
a few sprinkles of flour sizzle in the skillet.
Place chicken pieces in skillet skin side down
and fry for 10 minutes. Turn the pieces, using
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Blue Ridge Country March/April 2021

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