Southern Fried Chicken

[maytagbear]

For raw small chickens.......

go to the deli counter, if the store sells rotisserie cooked chickens, and ask if they will sell you one. They may blink, but the answer, usually, is "yeah, sure."

Lawrence/Maytagbear.

 

[steve_b79]

7:37 in the morning, and now I'm craving fried chicken. To heck with my diet - that looks incredible!

 

[norgeway]

The problem with store bought Lard..

And this is coming from one whos family kept hogs for many years, The slaughter houses kill hogs anytime, they pay no attention to the moon phases and they pay no attention if the hog is in heat or not, either will ruin the meat and the lard, No one in the South that kills hogs for their own meat would even think of killing a hog without checking the almanac and making sure the sign was right and no one would kill a hog in heat!You may wonder why one pack of bacon you buy frys nice and makes nice flat crispy strips, and the next pack bows up and looks and tastes bad...they killed one hog in the right sign and one they didn't, same thing with making pickles or kraut...

 

[michaelman2]

Not to mention the grocery store lard is artificially hydrogenated.

SudsMaster, my guess is the brand you had is similar to the Hormel product. I cannot believe there is even a market for that stuff. It smells and tastes awful.

Maytagbear, I like your idea about asking the associate about purchasing the raw smaller chicken used in the rotassarie. As mentioned above 3 lbs or smaller for a fryer. I put that in the original post because it makes a difference for frying.

 

[toploader55]

Hans, That is so cool.

Here in New England, an old gent said that You never plant Annuals before Labor Day. He also said that If you get snow in the spring, it's known as "Poor Man's Fertilizer".

 

[mattl]

I'd think twice about buying the chickens used in the rotisserie.  Loaded with chemicals and water, I won't eat them unless I have to.  Often I've found the insides are still half filled with guts, no thanks.

 

[vacerator]

It's also

the brine used in store bought rotisserie chickens. Added salt, sugars, etc.

 

[sudsmaster]

Mike,

The Fry-King boxed lard is targeted to small business/restaurant use... I imagine it's used in deep fryers. I regret, a bit, that I never even tried it or tasted it, but it just didn't look right to me.

I remember my mom used to save all sorts of grease - primarily from bacon - and make lye soap from it. I remember my dad throwing a fit one day (he liked to bake bread occasionally, and it was good) when she told me to wash my hands with that nasty brown lye soap. As I recall the argument got worse and no bread was baked that day, LOL. But that bacon grease lye soap was pretty awful.

 

[michaelman2]

Fry King lard and Bacon Soap

I looked up the brand you mentioned and Fry King does appear to be marketed to the commercial deep fryer user. I am not sure what they mean by "refined" however I suspect it has been hydrogenated, bleached and deodorized (guessing here).

Wow, the bacon fat soap...I agree with you, does not appeal to me at all.

Years ago there was a very high end skincare company, Erno Laszlo and they produced a soap that was black. I remember reading the ingredients and it contained "tallow", so I knew it was most likely beef fat in this "tony", high end, expensive soap. They changed the formulation in the late 1970s using another fat and it is still around.

PS, the soap was not made black by the tallow, it was from what they called "sea mud".

 

[sudsmaster]

Fry-King

As I recall, the Fry-King refined lard was not hydrogenated (why bother hydrogenating lard, anyway, since it's mostly saturated to begin with?). It does have BHA/BHT which are relatively benign preservatives closely related to Vitamin E. Maybe some citric acid too. Next time I see it, I'll take a closer look at the ingredient list.

It may well be deodorized, as it likely comes from pigs fed slop or from fat associated with rotting meat. Who knows?

 

[michaelman2]

Suds,

Yep, this was always my question with Hormel, why hydrogenate something that is saturated anyway? I am wondering if they hydrogenate their lard since it can liquefy at about 86 degrees and that would be a mess in a unlined box?

I think the odor situation was very well explained in reply # 21. I never knew all of what he mentioned, however it all makes complete sense. His post was very enlightening and interesting about the importance of the correct time to slaughter and so forth...

He also makes mention of bacon sometimes looking and tasting bad...boy have I had that happen at times.

Someone emailed me and asked why I dislike Crisco and why I don't use it for frying. I guess the main reason is that it is completely tasteless and the hydrogenation of the oils is just not a good idea, in my book. Does Crisco fry and bake well?....absolutely it does. Just not my thing.

 

[stan]

Reply 21 Hans

Hits the nai on the head.
There isn't much of a reason to hydrogenate good Lard. I suspect they do because its cheaper to store on a grocery shelf, rather than in the refrigerated section.
If the hog was butchered at the right time, and the the rendering is done right, there shouldn't be any color, or odor.
Lye soap = Soap made with animal fat (pork)..If the soap is made right, it would not have any odor (unkess it was scented deliberately) or be anything but pure white.
You don't want to use a smoked meat fat to make soap with.. Not Unkess you had to.

 

[sudsmaster]

I don't know about Hormel lard, but the Fry King boxed lard comes with a "liner", a big sealed plastic bag that holds the lard away from the cardboard. So, no, there is no containment problem with unhydrogenated lard packaged in that manner.

However, I recall from a nutrition class I took back in the 1970's, that the makeup of lard is based on the diet fed to the pigs from which it is taken. Pigs fed mostly vegetable fodder then to have more liquid lard. Do the math.

 

[stan]

What math?

What are we making..Chicken or soap? I've never seen liquid Lard..melted lard..yes.

 

[sudsmaster]

Um, for some reason "do the math" has been my cynical catch phrase this week. Maybe it's because I've been anxiously following my retirement accounts lately, trying to decide when to shift to bonds or income producing investments.

What I meant is that if the pigs are fed a diet high in polyunsaturated fats, then their lard will also be higher in polyunsaturated fats. I've never confirmed this, it was graphically related to our university class by the nutrition PhD who taught it. Something along the lines that the fat would just spill out when the carcass was butchered.

Perhaps if the hogs were fed a high corn diet, and corn oil is high in polyunsaturated fats, this is perhaps not so uncommon as one might think.

Sorry, it's not a pretty image but those are the facts of our food chain.