Paula Deen's Fried Chicken : CLAS June 2014

This month's Cook Like A Star featured chefs are Paula Deen and The Deen Brothers. I'm sure everyone knows who Paula Deen and sons, Jamie and Bobby Deen are! I really admire Paula Deen's passion and determination, when as a single parent, she raised her two sons, doing various jobs to make ends meet and started a home-catering service. Now she is a successful restaurateur, with cooking shows, more than a dozen cookbooks to her name, and her two sons, Jamie and Bobby are successful cooks, restaurateur and cookbook authors too.

I like her Southern style cooking. She has received much criticism in using high amounts of butter, salt and sugar in her cooking. Of course, in my opinion, one need not follow exactly, and I have successfully made a few of her recipes by reducing the amount of fats and salt, which worked out fine.

Her talented sons, Jamie and Bobby have even started a "Take It Lighter" where, quote from their website "The Deen Bros. love their mom's cooking and love living a well-balanced, helathy lifestyle. So they can have both, they have taken some of their favorite recipes of their mom's and taken them lighter, cutting the fat and calories without the flavour!"

Let's start cooking with Paula Deen and The Deen Bros.!!!

I made this delicious fried chicken, The Deen Brothers call it as "Mama's Fried Chicken".  I know that deep-frying is all greasy, and not a healthy choice, blah..blah...blah...(you know what I mean), but to me, a guilty indulgence such as this is OK once in a while. Ever since I bought this book more than two years ago, this is one of the recipes that I've bookmarked to try, because it is a deep-fried dish, I have kept putting it off! But I'm so glad I made this, it is delicious!

Sorry about the photos! I can never take photos of fried brown food to look appetizing, it always came out boring! But trust me, these chicken wings are delicious!

Instead of using a whole chicken which is cut up to pieces, I have used 10 large chicken wings instead. The chicken wings are marinated with  garlic powder, cayenne powder, black pepper and salt, cover and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes or 24 hours as recommended in the recipe. I marinated the wings for about 2 hours.

The wings are then dipped in an egg and water mixture, coat with self-raising flour, and deep-fried in hot oil until they are crispy on the outside and the chicken are cooked through. Remove from the hot oil and drain on kitchen paper towel. Serve hot.

According to The Deen Brothers, "Sometimes Mama adds a cup of hot sauce to the eggs before dipping the chicken. Just be sure to skip the cayenne if you want to try it."  Yes, I would love to try it with hot sauce!

These wings are so crispy with soft tender meat inside. We love it! I can taste the lovely spices in the crunchiness of the skin. Usually, I would love to eat fried chicken with some chilli sauce, but for these, there really is no need for any chilli sauce. Yummy! There were a few pieces of these fried wings on a plate when my hubby came back from work, his words was "you all went to KFC?"  Haha! 

Mama's Fried Chicken
(adapted from "Y'all Come Eat", The Deen Brothers)
1 (4-pound chicken), cut into 8 pieces
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
vegetable oil for frying
2 large eggs
1/4 cup water
1-1/2 cups self-raising flour

1. Rinse the chicken and pat dry with paper towels. In a small bowl, combine the salt, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, and black pepper. Using your fingertips, rub the spice mixture all over the chicken pieces to coat evenly. Cover and refrigerate from 20 minutes to 24 hours (the longer the better).
2. In a large Dutch oven, heat 3 inches of oil to 350F. In a shallow bowl, whisk together the eggs and water. Place the flour in a shallow dish.
3. Dip the chicken pieces first into the egg mixture and then into the flour, shaking off any excess. Fry the chicken, in batches if necessary, until golden brown and crisp on the outside and just cooked through (about 13 minutes for dark meat and about 10 minutes for white meat). Transfer chicken to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Serve hot. 

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Join us, as we cook with Paula Deen and The Deen Brothers, in this month's Cook Like A Star. Cook or bake from any of their recipes, and link your post, which must be a current post, to the linky below, or any of the hostess's links. You may find their recipes from these following sites

Paula Deen

The Deen Brothers

Food Network

Cooking Channel 

Please include the following in your post :

I'm linking this post to Cook Like A Star event, featuring Paula Deen and The Deen Brothers, hosted by Zoe of Bake For Happy Kids, Diana of Domestic Goddess Wannabe and Joyce of Kitchen Flavours.

and Cook-Your-Books #13 @ kitchen flavours

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