I hadn’t made old-fashioned fried chicken in years, so was intrigued when I saw a recipe for Fried Chicken with milk gravy in a hundred-year-old cookbook and decided to give it a try. The chicken pieces are coated with flour then fried. The recipe called for frying the chicken pieces in a covered skillet. The coating on the chicken is not nearly as thick and crispy as many modern fried chicken recipes, but it is like the coating on fried chicken that I remember from my childhood. The milk gravy was lovely.
Here’s the original recipe:
In the U.S. today, we generally refer to “skim milk.” The old recipe calls for “skimmed milk” rather than “skim milk.” Most milk was not homogenized a hundred years ago (and often it was not pasteurized), so the cream floated to the top. When using the milk, it could either be shaken to get “whole” milk or the cream on the top could be “skimmed” off to get the equivalent of skim milk. I don’t think that it matters whether skim, 2%, or whole milk is used in this recipe, so when I updated the recipe, I just called for using “milk.”
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Fried Chicken
1 whole chicken, cut into pieces
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
fat (lard, shortening) or cooking oil
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
Combine the flour, salt, and pepper; then roll the chicken pieces in the flour mixture.
In the meantime, heat 1/2 inch of fat or oil in a large skillet (that has a lid) using medium heat. When hot, carefully place the floured chicken pieces in the pan. Cover skillet, and cook for approximately 5 minutes or until the bottom side of each piece is lightly browned, then gently turn, cover skillet, and fry until the other side is browned. The chicken pieces will need to be turned several times. Continue cooking until a meat thermometer indicates that the temperature is at least 165° F. (Put large pieces of chicken in the skillet and cook for a few minutes before adding smaller ones, if there is wide variation in the size of the pieces.)
Remove chicken from skillet, and pour most of the fat or oil out of the skillet. Put back on the stove at medium heat. Stir the 3 tablespoons flour into the remaining fat/oil and browned bits. Slowing stir in the milk. Continue stirring and cooking until the gravy thickens. Remove from heat and serve.
My family never made fried chicken but made gravy from almost every meat. My husband’s grandma made the best fried chicken according to his family and they always bring it up when they are together.
My mother also also almost always made gravy when she serve meat.
I don’t know why, but somehow the idea of a milk gravy, even when made with skimmed milk (as we Brits still call it) is distinctly unappealing. Is it an American thing?
Yep!!! Also very southern but popular all over.
I must give it a try then!
Probably.
I can’t stand gravy in general. I really dislike it, save for biscuits and gravy when very well-made.
Big holiday meals in the US always seem to feature somebody who is going to insist that you have gravy, and maybe helpfully ladle out a generous helping of it before you can say no.
We have those types here too. They mean well ,,, 😉
This comment makes me smile. I can just picture the many times people have ladled gravy over my food before I could stop them.
There are regional variations in the U.S. whether water or milk is used when making gravy.
Wonderful to see this old recipe, Sheryl. It starts right off with an old-fashioned concept, for there are few people these days who know how fresh the chicken is, we just take it out of the refrigerated case and put it in our cart. These days a lot of people make their fried chicken by marinating it in buttermilk, I guess that’s a more modern technique? Great to see your recipe and the 1923 one, Sheryl, thank you.
It’s gotten simpler to make chicken now that we no longer need clean the bird and cut it up. I think that marinating chicken in buttermilk is a newer method. I don’t remember ever seeing a hundred-year-old recipe that called for that technique.
Oh yes! This is exactly how my grandmother and mother made fried chicken! An it was a Sunday noon staple! And of course we had gravy – and this is the very recipe/method used. It has been a few years since I’ve fried chicken but the last time this was the recipe!! (I never thought of it as old…)
It’s nice to hear that this is just the way multiple generations have made fried chicken in your family.
Sunday dinners at my grandparents’ house!
Chicken was often Sunday dinner at my relatives’ homes, too.
I’d be curious the extent to which this is a Midwestern thing.
Growing up in my household, we didn’t have gravy often, and would never have had it for a meal like this. Gravy appeared at Thanksgiving or Christmas when it was made for those occasions and ladled onto mashed potatoes, ruining them.
But in the Midwest, which is to the East of here, things with milk seem to be a staple. I’m not hugely keen on milk, quite frankly, but Midwesterners seem to be. A coworker of mine once told me, for example, of eating at her in laws, who were N. Dakota farmers, and watching in horror as her mother-in-law poured sugared milk over lettuce for a salad. And I recall once eating at a friend’s house where they pulled a goose, like you pull pork, and creamed it.
Ick.
That is weird to me. That is exactly how my mother (born 1923) made chicken and gravy and the only way I know how to do it. She just used whole milk though.
I always enjoy it when I find old recipes that are very similar to recipes that my mother made.
Now that you mention it, I enjoy putting sugar and milk on leaf lettuce fresh out of the garden each spring. It’s actually very tasty. 🙂
The Midwest was ‘dairy country’. In the 1950’s margarine did not come already colored yellow. Too much like butter. It was white and came in a sealed plastic bag with a ‘ belly button ‘ of food dye in the center that would have to be broken then massaged into the margarine to make it yellow. Milk was only used to make ‘ milk gravy’ or sausage gravy – gravies where there were no meat juices to make a gravy with.
It’s fascinating how the consumer had to actually dye the margerine years ago. I think that it was because there were concerns back then that margerine would unfairly compete with butter if it was the same color when it was purchased. It makes sense that milk was used to make gravy was there was insufficient meat juices.
I love recipes like these. They bring back some really happy memories. Thanks so much for sharing.
It’s nice to hear that this post brought back some warm memories.