Chicken and Biscuits

After watching Bravo's Top Chef contestants battle it out for the best fried chicken this week, I was on a mission to try some of my own.  Food shows can be trouble.  They cause cravings.  I hit the internet to find something easy.  Who has a day to soak chicken in buttermilk?  I'm too impatient. Turns out I didn't find a recipe that suited me so as I find myself doing often, I winged it.

I cranked up the old school country music and got to cookin. I seasoned chicken liberally with salt, pepper, garlic powder and Lawry's seasoning salt then soaked it in buttermilk for about an hour. I mixed the same seasonings in the flour too.  I dipped the chicken in the flour and fried it in peanut oil (which I've never used before shockingly) in a skillet. Some of the super thick pieces like breasts and thighs took a good frying and a little while in the oven on 350 to get the internal temp right.  Did I mention with cooking and cleaning this was a four hour undertaking?  Well, the chicken AND the biscuits.

I Googled Southern biscuit recipe as an afterthought while standing in the middle of the grocery store this morning.  I have never made a single scratch made biscuit in my life.  My grandmother used to make little puck sized discs that were hard on the outside and super flaky inside. I'd sit and watch her measure out flour and mix the ingredients with her hands.  It would get all over her rings. I have always thought they looked complicated. But guess what?  They aren't!  Maybe it is the recipe, but I swear to you I whipped out two batches back to back of perfectly tall and flaky biscuits.  I fed a bunch of boys who had been out shooting all morning and they were all smiles chomping into chicken and biscuits with honey.

For the so easy you can't screw this up recipe, go here.  If you want to muck with it a little, which I did on batch 2, you can used salted butter instead of unsalted, and add a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar.  They could not have been more perfect.