There are so many ways to make fried chicken, but sometimes when you ask for someone’s recipe they give you a long list of ingredients à la KFC’s “11 herbs and spices”. But, there is a way to simplify the ingredient list and still end up with some of the best fried chicken you’ve ever had. Emmy (from the YouTube channel emmymade) tried this simple 4-ingredient fried chicken recipe recently and the results seem to speak for themselves.
The recipe she uses comes from Emily Megget’s cookbook Gullah Geechee Home Cooking. This trove of Southern recipes compiles generations of African American cooking knowledge from the Edisto Island area of South Carolina.
It might not sound like 4 ingredients is enough to make fabulous chicken (and that includes the oil), but one of those ingredients is seasoning salt, the Gold Medal seasoning salt from Sauer’s to be exact.
While Emmy had to substitute another brand due to lack of availability, any spice blend will add a lot of flavor to the chicken while technically only accounting for one ingredient on the list. Seasoning salts are a mix of spices, salt, and sometimes MSG- all of which can add a lot of depth to meat in particular.
After the chicken is seasoned, self-rising flour is used to dredge the chicken. And, Megget’s recipe calls for using a brown paper grocery bag to toss the chicken in to get it perfectly coated in flour. This is a great idea since most people have some of these brown bags at home and you can throw the whole thing away when you’re done to avoid cross contamination.
After that the last step is to fry the chicken to perfection. And Emmy gives the final result a glowing review, claiming that she “highly recommends” this method of making fried chicken. See how it’s done in the video below.