This is a cool place and an active promoter of Southern Foodways. I realize the above visual is pretty hard to read without a microscope. For a closer look, go to their web site at www.blackberryfarm.com. We are told their Sweet Tea Brined Fried Chicken is out of this world. This is fine dining with a down home twist served up in the beautiful Smokey Mountains of East Tennessee. Try out this recipe — we think you’ll love it.
SWEET TEA BRINED FRIED CHICKEN
8 chicken leg quarters, cut into thighs and drumsticks
1 quart brewed tea, double strength
1 lemon, quartered
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup kosher salt
1 quart ice water
3 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups corn flour (or fish fry)
2 tablespoons crab boil seasoning (recommended: Old Bay)
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
8 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
Peanut oil
Combine tea, lemon, sugar and kosher salt, and simmer for 5 minutes or salt and sugar are complete dissolved. Pour in ice water and cool brine completely. Submerge thighs and drumsticks in brine for 48 hours.
Remove to a wire rack and allow chicken to drain. Combine 2 cups of the flour and the corn flour, crab boil, chili powder, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Place remaining 1 cup flour in a medium bowl, and in a third bowl beat eggs with buttermilk. Line up bowls of flour, egg-buttermilk mixture and then the flour-corn flour mixture, in that order. Coat the chicken in the flour, then the egg-buttermilk mixture, and then the flour-corn flour mixture, applying pressure to ensure even adherence. Let the chicken sit in the refrigerator for 1/2 hour before frying.
Pour oil in a heavy pot at a depth of at least 3 inches. Heat oil to 300 degrees F. Fry chicken, submerged in oil, for 15 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer registers 170 degrees F for dark meat, 160 degrees F for white meat. Drain on a rack. Cool to room temperature, and then place in refrigerator for at least 4 and no more than 24 hours. Serve cool from a picnic basket or cold, straight from the refrigerator.
For other outstanding fried chicken recipes, we suggest you order the book seen below:
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