Stuff You Should Know - Juicy: The Fried Chicken Story

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Fried chicken is Chuck’s favorite food, and Josh sure doesn’t dislike it. It is with this appreciation that SYSK plunges into the hot grease of fried chicken history – and there’s a lot to it!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too in spirit and that makes this stuff you should know. This is, I don't blame you, Chuck, I love fried chicken but I love it even more after researching this. I've just got this whole must-have attitude and I think that brings up an important point

that we should lead with, which is if you are vegan, you should probably skip this episode because you're not going to be vegan by the end of it, I'll tell you that much. People ask the favorite food question. You get that a lot in your life and I guess I sort of went back and forth over the years with different things but it's fried chicken. It is fried chicken, full stop. Okay, well then you are, I'm guessing something of an expert for Atlanta fried chicken, best fried chicken in Atlanta?

Oh man. Sorry to put you on the spot, do you want to come back to it at the end of the episode? Well no, I was afraid you would ask me like what my favorite of all time was or something that's really hard because there's so many kind of small variations and I love fried chicken so much. I love so many different kinds that I don't know that I could say that I've ever had it like put down my fork or my fingers really and said this is hands down like the best fried chicken I've ever had.

I've said this is some of the best fried chicken I've ever had a lot but I will say this and it is a little controversial if you live in the south to take a grocery store allegiance like this but Publix is known for their fried chicken. I don't like it. I like Kroger's fried chicken better, much better. I've never had Kroger's fried chicken but I don't like Publix's fried chicken either. It's not good. It's too bready for me and I don't know if it's my local Publix but it always tastes

like it's like the oil is old. Accurate. Yeah, man. It's just doesn't do it. I love Kroger's fried chicken. I'm a big fan of minimal breading. Let that chicken skin shine and sort of a dry fry is more my jam. Gotcha.

Gotcha. I have had the experience of putting my fork down, actually my fingers down and saying like that was the best fried chicken I've ever had in my life. Let's hear it. Remember that restaurant in Decatur Watershed? Oh, sure. So the head chef was Scott Peacock and he and his mentor Edna Lewis came up with this fried chicken recipe that they used to serve it at Watershed and it was, I mean I've never

had anything even approaching it and I've had really good fried chicken too. I would say second is probably Colonnade over on Cheshire Bridge. Really good. Yeah, Colonnade. It's just an entirely different level and you can find the recipe online really easily and it's pretty, it's pretty hashtag basic but something about it all comes together and makes it just astoundingly good. It's so good.

Yeah. It's just so good, Chuck. I think Emily Sailors from Indigo Girls was co-owner or owner of Watershed for a while. May still be? Yeah. I don't know. No, she sold it, I think. Okay.

And then Scott Peacock moved on and everything. It was like the Beatles for a second. I am also going to caveat this and shout out my grandmother, Bryant. Opal Bryant's fried chicken was really my favorite. I haven't had it. You know, she died at the age of 101 about eight years ago but she hadn't been cooking for a while either. So it's been since I was probably in my 20s since I had Opals and hers was, and I'm a

big fan of this preparation, not deep fried or pressure fried but skillet fried, which is when you have a cast iron skillet and you're flipping the chicken. You're letting it fry and flipping the chicken because it's not completely covered in oil. And she also used just whatever grease was in the big jar on her stovetop. She would just throw all the grease in there from everything she ever cooked. Oh man, I'll bet that was so good. It would harden or congeal into this lardy jar of goodness. So she would just kind of just slop whatever that was.

So probably some bacon grease in there. Not probably, most definitely. Country ham stuff. There was all kinds of meaty congealed fat in there. Yeah, sounds good. But her stuff was so good. So yeah, so we're talking fried chicken. We could just keep doing this if you want.

I know. We could start a food show maybe when we eventually retire. If we start a food show, we're naming it Opal Bryant's Fried Chicken. All right, great. Or if we ever open a restaurant, that should be the name. Let's talk. So yeah, we'll do a food show sometime. This will be one of those things where we can be like, and our fried chicken episode that

we did years back was really good too. This is going to be like that kind of episode. So we're talking fried chicken. And it's one of those things where everyone associates the dish with the American South. And for good reason, that's kind of where it caught its, it was established in the way that we understand it today, which is from what I can tell, bone-in chicken pieces, breaded and fried in oil. And that is fried chicken.

That's American, Southern American fried chicken. That's what purists will tell you. Anything different is not technically fried chicken. But the American South is kind of where it got its start. But it dates back even further than that. And even weirder, it seems like it might have come from a specific place in Europe originally too. Yeah.

Scotland. Yeah. If you can believe that. There are appearances, I mean, people have been eating chickens for a long time. You can find recipes in books from the 18th century for fried chicken. There was one in 1736. There was one in 1747 where it's clearly dipped in flour, fried in some kind of lard. But it seemed like the Scots are the ones who started frying it.

And I looked up this up in a lot of places and kind of saw the same thing. The Brits didn't really care that much about eating things that tasted good. So they would boil or bake their chicken. A baked chicken can be good, but boiled chicken can never be good. And the Scots said, no, we'll fry it. And so they started frying it up in lard and we're really on to something as it turned out. Yeah.

And the reason why at least one food historian, this is their theory, but the reason why it kind of has legs is that a lot of the Scots and Scots, Irish colonists who came to the United States, they owned slaves. They enslaved people and they think that the Scots taught their slaves to cook this for them. And that's where the origination of black American Southerners having this, like being the kind of the place where fried chicken originated. That's where they think that it probably came from, via Scotland.

Yeah. And I mean, I think what we can say for sure is that's where it was perfected. Where these enslaved women, they spiced it in such a way, because Scotland in the UK, they're doing much better now, but they weren't known for the most flavorful spiced food. So it was, even though they were frying chicken, it was known as a little more bland until they got to the American South and these women started spicing it right. And that's where it became this really, really scrumptious and delicious food that we know today brought over from Scotland, but perfected in the American South.

Yeah. I think the theory, the other theory that was long held is that it was brought over by West African slaves to America. But I think people have done investigations around West Africa and there isn't a fried chicken dish that they would fry their chicken lightly over there, but then they would braise it for the rest of the time. And I think the Brits would do that too. Not the same.

No, it isn't the same. So they actually do think it kind of came from Scotland, but yes, perfected by enslaved cook women in the American South. And there's mentions of it too, I think dating back to the 17th century. So it is an all American dish for sure. Yeah. It was a dish that was a little more of a treat at the time, at least preceding the Civil War, it was very labor intensive to get these chickens and to pluck the chickens

and prepare them and cut them up. And it wasn't like just like throwing a whole plucked chicken into a pot kind of thing. There was no air conditioning, obviously. So like, you know, laboring over a hot stove all day and hot grease, it was just a lot to undertake. So it was a little more of a fancy meal to have like on the 4th of July, maybe or a big like birthday celebration. And even though these women, these enslaved women were perfecting this dish, their family

wasn't really allowed to eat it that much until they were able to raise their own chickens. There were laws, or I don't know about laws per se, but enslaved people weren't allowed to own cattle, they weren't allowed to own pigs. But chickens were sort of seen as not very significant enough to restrict at the time. So they let enslaved people, you know, own and raise chickens, some of which they would actually at the plantation buy from them to eat. Yeah. I think Monticello bought their chickens from their enslaved people working there.

Yeah. I think you're right. So there was a upshot or there was a upside of the black women that were cooking this under duress at the time who learned to perfect this dish. Because that after Emancipation, when the Jim Crow South started, they were, a lot of them were able to support themselves by selling fried chicken because they were the only ones who knew how to make it correctly. And so there was a woman, an American study scholar named Psyche Williams-Forson who wrote

a book basically, so this chicken made this house or this house was made by chicken. Yeah, it was called Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs, colon, Black Women Food and Power. And I do want to shout her out too because she has a new book out this year that looks great. It seems like she really explores sort of the diaspora and how that affected foods that black people ended up eating sort of around the world, especially in America. And there's a new one called Eating While Black, Food, Shaming and Race in America that just came out this year.

And I saw a couple of interviews with her, it's amazing stuff that she's writing. Right on. So one of the things that she explored were these women called waiter carriers who would show up along the tracks at railroad stops, and this was a time when railroads had really just kind of started up. And you couldn't really get food anywhere on these cars, dining cars hadn't been invented yet. And these black women who were called waiter carriers would show up with pies or coffee

or fresh-picked berries or fried chicken and would sell them, like hand them to the customers on the train through the windows. I think they sold chicken breasts for like 25 cents a piece and other drumsticks and thighs for I think five cents a piece, something like that. And there's a specific town called Gordonsville, Virginia, which became known as the fried chicken capital of the world. And apparently some people would go out of their way to stop in Gordonsville, Virginia on their train journey so that they could buy the fried chicken there.

Yeah, it was a regional hub in Gordonsville at the time and they still have a pretty robust fried chicken festival, I think in October, I think we missed it this year. But I saw them refer to themselves as the chicken leg center of the universe. Oh, wow. Which is another fun name, but we should also point out while this great sort of entrepreneurial spirit was being born after emancipation, a lot of these women were also harassed and robbed and things like that. So they were doing the best they could to make a living, but it still wasn't as above

bored as it should have been, of course. Gotcha. So they were eventually, I guess outlawed by proxy after America started developing like food safety laws, they're like, you can't do that anymore. We're going to start regulating vendors and then also dining cars came along and that really kind of did the, that was the death knoll of it. Forget this amazing fried chicken being handed to you through a window for a quarter. Come eat in the dining car.

We're featuring British boiled chicken for dinner tonight. It's probably right. So you said something about how these women were robbed and exploited and there's a through line through a lot of American history where a lot of black culture gets kind of taken over by white culture and that the transfer is lost to history or erased or blurred or people just ignore it. So fried chicken is actually one of those things because if you ask like a lot of Americans on the street who invented fried chicken, I would guess a significant portion of them

are going to identify Colonel Sanders as the person who did and he definitely did not. He wasn't even the first fried chicken restaurant tour, but he was part of a tradition where while he wasn't stealing directly from the laborer, the intellectual property you could say of black women, he definitely benefited from it big time. There were people who were just directly exploiting it and there was a restaurant chain in Salt Lake City that was open in 1925, Chuck. Yeah. This is one of the shameful parts of our racism in America.

This is in the 1920s and it was just a time when you had like straight up racist iconography on mainstream restaurant chains and that was the case with the Coon Chicken Inn had racist caricatures on the logo and it was in birth of a nation. It makes an appearance in birth of a nation that's like the ultimate stamp of racism of this sort of stereotype of what this great food that was invented by these enslaved people was then turned on them and used against them as sort of a stereotype of whatever they wanted to say what they thought black people were at the time. Which was basically the goal was to debase and demean black people so that they wouldn't

enjoy full citizenship either politically, legally, or culturally. We talked about it in our watermelon episode because everybody loved watermelons and everybody loved fried chicken but the way that the white society would point to it to kind of degrade the black society was, well, we all love it but black people really love it. They're really crazy for watermelon, they're really crazy for fried chicken, they'll do anything for it and it just had this purpose and this goal and successfully of demeaning them, making them seem less of that even stuff that everybody enjoyed, they enjoyed it differently. They were different, they were less somehow and apparently the fried chicken thing in

particular was first sourced in birth of a nation. All right, so let's take a break and let's talk about some of the more fun parts of fried chicken. How about that? Okay. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running

and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Patrick curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good, there is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. There's a Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Stuxnet. Who's Stuxnet? Stuxnet. I don't know. You know it's Stuxnet.

Is that an S? Stuxnet. Stuxnet. It's a great name. Yeah. That's the name of it. I know. It's a great name.

All right. Stuxnet with an X. All right. So fried chicken, well, let's talk about chicken in general. It wasn't really on the menu of every American who eats meat like it is today. Chicken was a distant third to pork and beef for most of our history, actually. There's some stats here, the National Chicken Council, which is pretty fun. In 1960, Americans ate 28 pounds of chicken per capita.

And just a few years ago in 2019, that number was at 97 pounds, whereas red meat went from 133 to 112. So there's been a big shift in, or a shift in the kinds of meats that Americans eat. And chicken farming wasn't as big as beef and pig farming for a long, long time. It was sort of a mom and pop thing until they realized that people really love chicken. And we can fortify them with antibiotics and we can get those breasts unnaturally plump and build these huge barns to raise them in. And basically, like, hey, we can factory farm chickens just like we can cows and pigs.

Yeah. So that really boosted chicken consumption. And by the way, that 97 pounds of chicken that Americans ate in 2019, I think it equaled about 11 billion birds. So the other thing that happened in addition to cheap, widely available chicken were new cooking techniques and the big cooking technique that really turned fried chicken from something that took like up to 20 minutes to cook correctly to something that you could sell as fast food where it was just using pressure cookers.

So they would fry the chicken in a pressure cooker and still, people still do it today. And the pressure would change, it would lower the boiling point of the oil so the oil could get hotter and the chicken would cook faster. And if you did it right, if you breaded it right, if you use the right kind of breading, if you did, you know, grind your chicken and all that first, then you could cook this stuff really fast and it would come out really good. Yeah. So now Colonel Sanders comes into the picture.

You can't talk about fried chicken without talking about Harland Sanders. And he got a sort of a late start as far as his chicken business goes. At the age of 40 was when he started serving chicken in front of the service station in Corbyn, Kentucky, then opened up a cafe, Sanders Cafe across the street, serving that skillet fried chicken that I love so much. And then 1939, so I guess he was 49 years old. He finally develops this secret 11 herbs and spice recipe, cooking in the pressure cooker. The governor gave him his fake Colonel ship.

He was not an army man. The Colonel ship was bestowed upon him in an honorary fashion by the governor of Kentucky. And that's when he started dressing up like old Colonel Sanders in his white suit and his Bolo tie and his little white goatee. And a character was all of a sudden born. He became more than a man. I read a little bit about him. He was known for two things, had a really, really, really foul mouth and was a bit handsy,

shall we say. Oh, really? Yeah. They described him as having an insatiable sexual appetite. And because it was, you know, the 1930s and 40s would kind of come into a room and just be like, hey, hey, who can I grab onto? That kind of thing. Wow.

I did not know that part. Yeah. That's the legend. I have a Colonel Sanders story. Oh, let's hear it. I was driving down the road one day, South Metro Atlanta, and I was driving alongside a Buick and the Buick had a vanity license plate, which ties into our license plate episode, by the way.

And it said KFCCOL. And in the back, I don't, I never know what that thing's called, but the back panel behind the back seat between that and the window, whatever that, like the rear dashboard, I guess, there was a Colonel Sanders bobblehead. And as I pulled up closer and closer to the driver, I realized I was looking at the man who played Colonel Sanders throughout the 80s and 90s. And he, I swear to God, was wearing a white suit and a black string tie. And he was driving down the road in the 21st century in America.

Yeah. I think it said Bolo ties to that string tie. It's a little different. Okay. That's enough. That's enough. He was the TD actor. Yes.

It was the, yeah, Colonel Sanders was long dead by this time. This is the guy who played Colonel Sanders in all the ads for decades. Yes, of course. Of course. I mean, I guess it was. I didn't like, you know, run him off the road and interview him, but this was, there's just no way it wasn't him. It was him.

I could tell you by looking at him and then, you know, the other kind of evidence, the vanity plate and the bobblehead really kind of teared it for me. And my one favorite thing that they've done recently in the past few years is when they started casting all the different people to play Colonel Sanders. Oh, that was great. Yeah. Wasn't Amy Sideris one once? I don't know.

I think she was. I know I didn't see them all, but I thought that was a pretty, pretty clever little twist. Oh, by the way, speaking of Amy Sideris, this is going to come out long after this. But do you know Leslie Jordan? Yeah. He just passed away yesterday. I'm super, super gutted about this. Yeah.

He's just this great guy. If you knew him on Instagram, he was really fun and funny and all that. One of my favorite Instagram accounts. Some of the interviews that I'm seeing of him now, one of them was posted by Amy Sideris where he's talking about how he wanted to live a life of service because, you know, taking care of other people brings you out of yourself. He was just this great guy. The best.

And if you aren't familiar with him, go look up his Instagram account. I didn't realize it at the time, but now I do that the world really lost somebody special. So, RIP, Leslie Jordan. Yeah. I had seen him on, like, Will and Grace and other stuff like that, but his Instagram account is where I just fell in love with the guy. Yeah, for sure. Hey, hunkered downers.

He was great. And I was very, very sad to learn about that because I was just, like, I was watching him on Instagram like the day before. Oh, yeah. Like hanging out. The Putin thing? Dave Hill. Well, I saw that too.

And the other tribute is very good to read is Megan Malaley's. She doesn't post on Instagram much, but hers was very, very sweet and sad. Yeah. I will check that one out. All right. Back to the Colonel. Yeah. Sure.

He sold the brand in 1964 for, imagine, a boatload of money. And now it's a part of Yum Brands, one of those humongous, nebulous sort of food corporations that owns lots of fast food restaurants. And it went from Kentucky Fried Chicken officially to KFC in 91, apparently because the state of Kentucky said, you know what? There's a lot of brands using our name. Why don't we trademark the name Kentucky so we can make a little money off this? And so KFC said, we'll just go by KFC then.

Yep. So which is hilarious that Kentucky did that. I wonder how much money they made from it. I don't know. Or I wonder if all the brands just said, all right, we're just K whatever. Right. It really harmed, though, Kentucky Black Powder and Musket, Inc., I think the hardest. At any rate, I saw that when Colonel Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1964, he immediately

started trash-talking it to open his own restaurant. They moved to block him from doing that. He sued them for like $100 million. They gave him like a million dollars and let him open the restaurant in exchange for him to stop talking trash about KFC from that point on. Wow. Yeah, he was quite a character. And also, I mean, like the fact that he was considered a possible running mate for George

Wallace, the pro-segregationist presidential candidate, the fact that he was kind of like, you know, a throwback to the antebellum South with his ties and his accent and all that. Sure. A lot of people just presume he was racist. And when Papa John's had that scandal where Papa John himself like used that racial slur, he tried to say like, Colonel Sanders used to say that, who cares? And apparently Colonel Sanders' family came out swinging and were like, they called Papa John a weasel and basically a scumbag and said like, our grandfather, great-grandfather,

or whoever, like did not use racial slurs. He attended black church sometimes. Interesting. Yeah, he was not. He was many things, but he was not a racist. So you shut your mouth, Papa John. And I guess it worked. Popeyes came along to rival KFC is probably.

Yeah, we're talking about Fred chicken. It's rival. Popeyes was founded and it's Popeyes without an apostrophe, by the way. The joke was from founder Alvin Copeland, a senior, so that he was so poor he couldn't afford the apostrophe, which is a great joke. But that was a Louisiana chain open in 1972 as chicken on the run. People were like, it's really not so great. So he spiced it up a little bit and went to a more New Orleans style chicken and changed

it to Popeyes named after the cartoon character. No, named after Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman's character in the French connection. Fact of the podcast. That's the weirdest fact I could ever imagine. I mean, that is a trivia question right there, for sure. Oh yeah, because you're setting people up because everyone's going to say it's Popeyes because they're now using him as the logo, like Popeye, not Gene Hackman and his little bowler at or whatever.

Right. But you'd have to word it just so because you'd spook some people and be like, that's too easy a question. Sure. What's really here? Right. You'd have to word it just right. But yeah, Copeland was a, he was a character as well.

I didn't read that he was handsy or anything like that. He raced speed boats. He loved spending money. He was a profligate spender and he was not at all ashamed or embarrassed about it. And one of the things he was well known for in New Orleans was his Christmas displays outside his home. And they were so elaborate. They drew so many people that like sheriff's deputies had to direct traffic in the area

around it because people would just park and stop and go look at them. So he was that kind of guy. And I mean, there's a special place in the universe for people who spend, you know, freely on Christmas decorations outside of their house so much so that it attracts like local townsfolk who come and like get the Christmas spirit from that kind of thing. I think those are special kind of people. Agreed. I love it.

Popeyes was eventually bought out again by one of these conglomerates called restaurant brands international. Really great creative name there. And you know, there are KFCs all over the world. There are KFC knockoffs all over the world. I know. The SFC in Iran, a superstar fried chicken and PFC perfect fried chicken in London, which I looked up to see how closely they were ripping them off.

And the PFC, the font is definitely the same font, but the logos and stuff look different. Okay. And Colonel Sanders has like blonde hair. Right. Yeah, exactly. Speaking of Colonel Sanders appearance, apparently KFC's most profitable nation is China. Big time. Yes.

The people in China since 1987 have gone berserk for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Again, it's more profitable in China than in the U.S. The offerings are a little bit different. Like there is fried chicken, but it's not the most popular menu item. They have like regional dishes as well, and I think those are a little more popular. But one of the reasons I saw floated for why Kentucky Fried Chicken is so popular in China is that Colonel Sanders vaguely resembles Confucius and that there's like an affinity for him there.

Oh, wow. It is double. It's the biggest, most popular fast food in China, double the size of McDonald's as far as number of stores. And I think when they were first built in the 80s, it was a little bit of a luxurious thing where there was more room, the restaurants were really clean, and it was sort of contrasted with street vendor food as a place where you can go and take your family that's a little nicer.

Gotcha. And I did look up the menu items. They sell kanji and egg tarts. There's something called a dragon twister, which I really, there's a cool article where this food writer went there and ate a bunch of stuff and wrote about it, but the dragon twister sort of looks like, you know, when they'll take Peking Duck and wrap it in like a thin pancake, almost like a roll with cucumber and spring onion and stuff. That's what the dragon twister is, except it looks like a chicken, not finger, yeah,

like a chicken finger. Right. It's a chicken finger wrapped in a chicken breast. That's what I'm guessing. No, it's that thin pancake, but it does have the sweet bean sauce and cucumber and spring onion. It looks really good. I don't want one of those.

If we have any listeners in China, please mail us at once. Right. Just drop ship it. And then also in Japan, KFC is not as huge as it is in China, but it's become a national Christmas tradition. Oh, really? KFC is the traditional Christmas dinner in Japan. I think you told me that before.

I love that. Yeah. I think it was in a Christmas episode once. Yeah. That's good stuff. And then Korea, I believe, they do have KFC, but they took the KFC methods and turned it into something else, which is Korean fried chicken, which apparently if you like fried chicken, you're going to like Korean fried chicken.

And there's no reason you have to choose. You can like them both because they're so wildly different that there's no reason to choose. Just love it all. Yeah. I mean, they're not that different. It's still crunchy fried chicken, but in Korea, they double fry it. Right.

So they fry it, well, they fry it once and then they fry it again. So it's going to be... Not once, not twice, but thrice. It's going to be extra crunchy. And then they have a, you know, they're known for this sticky spicy glaze that's on it. So like Korean sticky fried chicken is really, really great. I love it. It's one of my favorite preparations.

A lot of people think that when American troops were stationed there, after the end of the Korean war, they may have introduced locals there. And then they built on that on their own to sort of make it their own. Which actually that might be true because apparently prior to American occupation, they would steam their chicken. That's how they prepared it typically. Oh, really? Mm-hmm.

Which is the opposite of crunchy. It really is. That's worse than boiled. Yeah. I don't know. I was wondering that too because I knew the steam part was coming back when we were talking about boiled chicken. And I wondered which is worse.

I think boiled is still worse. Yeah. I'm like, when your dog has an upset tummy, you give them boiled chicken? Oh, I hadn't thought about that. And white rice. Yeah, boiled chicken can be good if you're making like chicken salad. It's like a plant. Yeah.

Oh, all right. Yeah. I just forgot, I forgot about that. I was just thinking of like throwing like whole chicken breasts and bones and everything in a pot and boiling it. Well, who knows? That sounds awful. Yeah.

I mean, none of it is very appealing to me after you've had fried chicken that crispy brown goodness that Korea is so good at. They, I think in the 97 Asian financial crisis, a lot of people went into business for themselves, opened up their own little mom and pops chicken. I know beer and fried chicken is a very famous combo in South Korea. Great combo in America too. Yeah. And I think now there was a study in 2019 that found there were 87,000 fried chicken

restaurants in South Korea. Wow. And that's three and a half times the number of Kentucky fried chickens in the entire world. Wow. That's, yeah, South Koreans love their fried chicken. But what's interesting is that another survey found that they don't actually consider it to be a Korean dish, even though they put such a spin on it that everyone outside of the world considers that particular kind of fried chicken, Korean fried chicken, apparently

in Korea, South Korea, I should say they don't consider that. No word on what North Korea thinks about it. There are some chains from Korea that are open now in America, one of which I haven't tried yet, but there is one in Atlanta, I just have to drive a bit. There's one called Bon Chon. Oh yeah? Where is it? I think it's in Fayetteville, which is, I think it's south of Atlanta.

They didn't do their market research first. And then there's one called Mom's Touch Chicken, which is just now arriving in America. And I think we should take our last break now. Yay. Okay, sure. Yay. And we'll talk about some more variations on fried chicken, because why not? I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the

moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuxnet. Who? Stuxnet. Stay on with that. Stuxnet. I don't know what that is. You know it's Stuxnet. Is that in this?

Stuxnet. Stuxnet. It's a great name. You got a clue? Stuxnet. That's the name of it. I know. It's a great name.

All right. Stuxnet with an X. So Chuck, when we go to Nashville, let's just go ahead and say it. It's a really good chance we're going to do a show in Nashville this year. I was just in Nashville last weekend. Oh yeah. Did you go to Prince's Barbecue Chicken Check? No.

I went to the Stevie Nicks concert, but had a great time and I was like, Nashville just needs to be on my list because it's drivable and it's fun weekend and they've got hot chicken. We have it here too, but it originated there. Yeah. Hot chickens everywhere now. Yeah, there was a guy named Thornton Prince III who in 1945 opened Prince's Barbecue Chicken Check. I think they call it Prince's Hot Chicken Check now, I believe, but essentially every

version of hot chicken that is out everywhere from KFC to Dave's Hot Chicken to all the little like hot chicken operations that are just going crazy and for good reason, hot chicken is really, really good. It all started in Hadley Park neighborhood of Nashville thanks to Thornton Prince III. Yeah. I don't love hot chicken. Oh, I love it, man. It's so greasy, nasty.

It's so good. It is. One reason is because I'm developing more of a tolerance for good heat here in my fifties because I've generally avoided heat, but it depends on the kind of heat. Cayenne heat, which is the heat that is generally made for the hot chicken is one that kind of burns me more than is satisfying to me. I got you. And trust me, fried chicken is one of the reasons I am so out of shape, but hot chicken is even

worse because they dunk it in hot oil after they fried it and just sort of shake it out. So it is doubly bad for you. Yeah. The thing about researching this truck is I was like, there's so much good fried chicken to eat. I know. It's just selective, if you're just choosy and you just go to some place like princes where you just go to the best Korean fried chicken place in your town or you just build

a time machine and go back and eat some of Opal Bryant's fried chicken. You're not going to be able to eat it all that often. It'll become a delicacy, which I think it should be treated as because it is really, really bad for you if it's done right. And then if it's done in any kind of way that's approaching healthy, it's not being done right. And it's probably not that good. So yeah, it's really bad for you. But I think if you just treat anything in moderation like that, you can have it and

enjoy it. That's my problem. What moderation? For fried chicken. I know. I treat it as a regular, just like this is just what you eat. I was raised on fried chicken. I love it so much.

But I do need to, in theory, you would enjoy it more and be like, hey, I'm having my fried chicken for the month and I'm really going to savor it and enjoy it. You don't even have to do it like that. You could just be like, I want fried chicken, but instead of like hopping on over to Kroger and getting it at the drop of a hat, if you make it so you have to drive to like a really good place, you'll have it less probably. I don't know how this ended up. This episode ended up in me giving you health advice because I'm not really the person you

should be listening to about that, but here we are. Yeah, I know. It is what it is. I'm working on it. It is what it is, man. Pollo Comparo is something we ate in Guatemala and now they have those in the United States. There's one on Buford Highway and that is fried chicken with an adobo rub, which is delicious.

Yeah. By the way, Chuck, two things. I was such a dummy that when we went to Guatemala with Coed, I thought, oh, the American chain has infiltrated Guatemala. There's Pollo Comparo here. I didn't realize the opposite had happened because it's been, it was around in Guatemala starting in 1971, and then secondly, I also want to direct people to our ongoing Coed pledge drive to get to a million.

You can go to cooperativeforeducation.org slash S-Y-S-K and donate. How about that? I love it. I just saw the opportunity and I jumped on it. I pounced on it. Yeah. Take that 12 bucks that you would get for your third fried chicken meal of the week. Yeah.

Chuck and donate it to Coed. Can we talk about chicken? Wait, wait, do you really eat fried chicken three times a week? Well, it depends on what you're talking, you know? Chuck, I want to live your life, man. I mean, if you're talking about just like, you know, a few chicken fingers here and there, or are you talking about like a full fried chicken meal? Yeah.

No, that's not three times a week. Oh, if you're including chicken fingers, no, no, no, that's not the same thing. All right. Yeah. Fried chicken is, no, that's not the same thing. Yeah. It's a bone that makes it unhealthy. Right.

Exactly. Eureka. We should talk about chicken and waffles because that is a great food combination. When I lived in LA, Roscoe's was a place that I would love to go and take people from out of town who hadn't had chicken and waffles yet. It's become kind of a sort of a trendy brunch thing, but it's been around for longer than I thought, right? Yeah.

It's been around since at least the 30s with Wells Supper Club in Harlem, introducing a lot of the world to it, but I think it's gone back even further than that. But the question of whether it's Southern or not seems to be at issue. And if you ask a lot of Southerners, they'll be like, no, this is not a Southern dish, but they think that black migrants from the South showing up in New York and LA were the ones that developed it. So it's still got a link to the South. It's just not necessarily a Southern dish.

Did you ever eat at Gladys Night's House of Chicken and Waffles? No, because I was living away at the time when it was open. It was open until 2017. Oh, in Atlanta? Mm-hmm. Oh, I thought it went away before that. No, it was open until then. I looked it up because I wanted to make sure I remembered correctly that it wasn't there

anymore and it's not unfortunate. Okay. Well, I missed out. Sorry, Gladys. Okay. It's amazing she had such a great singing voice when she spoke like that. I know. Well, she was saving her voice for singing.

And jeez, I hate to go off track again, but since we mentioned her, I do need to mention that my favorite backing vocals of all time was the Pips on Midnight Train to Georgia. Really? If you just listened to the background singers in that song, gorgeous, beautiful. Another thing you can do is go listen to David Lee Roth singing without the music. That's really something to listen to as well. Yeah. Those are good.

Or any music video without the music is always fun too. Yeah. And especially when like you can hear their shoe squeaking and everything. The sneaker squeak is the best. So Chuck, if you were alive and on social media in 2019 to 2021, there is basically no way you weren't aware of what's come to be known as the chicken sandwich wars. Yeah. It was a big deal.

There's a gentleman named Truett Cathy who founded a restaurant called Chick-fil-A and claimed to be the first maker of the chicken sandwich in the 1960s. We have, you know, literal proof that what he really meant to say was, I'm the first white man to sell chicken sandwiches in a restaurant because there had been chicken sandwiches going back to the 1930s in places like Topeka, Kansas and Ebony magazine. They were talking about the dish. So it's been around for a long time. Truett Cathy did not invent the chicken sandwich and they need to stop saying that.

But Chick-fil-A... Oh, I don't think they're going to stop saying that anytime soon. But Chick-fil-A is very famous for their fried chicken sandwich with the butter bun with pickles. It's very good. So all of the other fast food joints, I think beginning with Popeye said, wait a minute, like some of us are selling chicken sandwiches, but we should kind of just do what they're doing and the chicken war started.

Chicken sandwich wars. Yeah. I somehow it started with like some sub tweets and shade being thrown on social media and people clapping back. And between August of 2019, when I believe Popeye's debuted their chicken sandwich in February, 2021, less than two years, 18 national and regional chains debuted or upgraded their chicken sandwiches. Holy cow.

In just that short amount of time. And that's the reason why, again, that's why it's become known as the chicken sandwich wars. And I was reading about it. I read one of the most corporate buzz-speaky articles I've ever read in my life about the phenomenon of the chicken sandwich wars. And this one executive, they call them quick service restaurants now, not fast food restaurants. This one QSR executive explained that chicken has a longer innovation runway than things

like burgers. That basically burgers have been done to death. There's nothing more you can do with the burger they've been trying. But chicken, it's wide open. But then this, I think it was a hype beast article said at the end, like, well, if the innovation runway is so long, basically everybody's just coming out with their own version of the exact same sandwich. And are we really innovating at this point?

And I think they ultimately said, well, if that's what the people want, give them what they want. Yeah. So I hate the longer runway corporate speak, but you can do a lot of things with the chicken breast. And it's usually breast that's being made for the sandwich. Good point. You know, you can have like a honey soy glaze, or you can have it like a sriracha thing, or

you can have it fully buffalo hot. You can throw some cheese and bacon on there. You can add lettuce and tomato. Like, there are a lot of, I think, more variations on what you can do. So I would agree with that. Yeah. I mean, God, I meant to tell you, Prince's menu includes a light mild. So not even mild, light mild.

So they've got something for you too, Chuck. Yeah. And speaking of hot, I also want to mention that cold fried chicken is even better. Yeah. It is really good. That's my preference. Yeah, for sure. It travels well.

It travels very well. Yeah. So the chicken wars are still pretty much going on. They're probably going to be going on for a long time, but I think it's turned into more of a cold war than the hot war it was. But Olivia helped us with this. I don't know if we mentioned it or not, but we really can't finish this episode without talking a little bit about the science, like why fried chicken so good, because if you stop

and think about it, it is an incredibly simple dish. You just take some chicken, you dip it in some sort of flour-based mixture, you put it in hot oil, and then you eat it. That's really all there is to it. Yeah. It can be that simple, and that is a very simple dry-fry preparation, sort of the lighter, the flour, for me, the better. But you can brine it overnight.

That is a really, really great way to make it super juicy. I don't think he listens to the show, but I'm a big proponent and follower of Kenji Lopez Alt. Great Instagram page and just seems like a good guy, and I think he's buddies with John Hodgman and Jesse Thorne and appears on their show. Shouting out Kenji Lopez Alt because he always breaks down food science in a way that's really cool. Like, hey, here's why the reason's behind the fried chicken or the chocolate chip cookie,

and here's what's actually happening and why I say to prepare or why people recommend you prepare things a certain way. In this case, Kenji Lopez Alt says, you can add garlic, hot sauce, you can add dill, but really brining it is one of the big keys because you want to get that salt going in a cellular way. Yeah. Remember our old friend, homeostasis? I do.

So when you dip a bird or soak a bird in brine, which is at least one tablespoon per one cup of water, that's a basic salt brine. The salt concentration outside of the bird's cells is higher than the concentration inside the bird's cells. So the stuff outside migrates inside, and in doing so, it actually allows it to draw in more water because when you're frying chicken, it's actually, and by the way, remember our super stuff guide to the economy and that one economist is like, chicken. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I do remember that. Every time I see chicken ever since then, I always think of him. But when you fry chicken, it's a very dehydrating process because you're cooking it in oil that's really efficient at transferring the heat. And so when you add that much more water, that ability to hold water, you lose a bunch, but you still retain a bunch, which makes for juicy, juicy chicken.

Yeah. And it also helps break down the proteins in the muscles and breaking down those fibers is going to make it more tender. It's all just going to make it more delicious. That's why you brine your turkey before Thanksgiving. Since we're shouting out books, Jake Kinjilope has all this written quite a few, but had one out this year called The Walk, Recipes and Techniques, where he just basically sings the praises of The Walk, and it's like you can do so many things in a walk, and it's not

just about making a stir fry. So check out The Walk, good book to have on your shelf. And also check out, he was interviewed in an article in Inverse talking about the science of fried chicken. And the author does a really good job of tracing their own journey and trying fried chicken and gives a lot of great tips because it's as simple as it is. It's a very intricate process that you can screw up really fast. If you let your oil get too hot, if you let the chicken brown too long, if you use the

wrong kind of seasonings, you want to do some research first before you try it. But if you do it just right, it comes out like Chuck will be knocking on your door if you do it right. Yeah. That author is Eric Decker, so you can also look at Eric Decker's recipes. You got to use the right kind of oil. Different people have different things to say about oils, but you want to have a high smoke point.

So everything from beef and duck fat to peanut oil to safflower oil is recommended. And just experiment with it. Get in there and try to skill it. Deep frying really, I mean, it's all going to be messy. It's all going to stink your kitchen up. It's just a lot to undertake, but that's why I don't really make it at home that much anymore. But it's good stuff.

I love it. I love it. There's a couple of things you could invest in just real quick that are fairly cheap. One is a grease splattering cover. Yeah, yeah. I got one of those. Take a little screen. It works really well, doesn't it?

It's just cleaning it as gross. And then the other thing is a candy thermometer. You can get them for very cheap and you want to basically get the oil to a very specific temperature when you're frying and keep it at that temperature as much as possible. Yeah. Okay. That's it. And then go forth and make fried chicken.

How about that? Yeah. Just don't bread it too much. There you go. Wise words from Chuck. And since I said that, everybody, of course it's time for listener mail. Hey guys, longtime listener, first time writer-inner, want to chime in, let you know how much your show means to me.

I'm a 90s kid turned dad and I always find your shows delivery well cared for as well as your constant vigilance to remain as unbiased as possible when presenting a topic. Of a young son, I always try to set a good example for as well as encouraging exploration of the world around him. And I find Chuck's candidness about the ups and downs of raising his daughter particularly helpful in my day-to-day. Nice. Anyway, guys.

As an urban planner for a city in Florida and as a public sector government employee in the heart of the sub-south, I consistently find myself greeting my teeth dealing with every flavor of, quote, Florida man and listening to your show always revives my sanity after a tough day at work. As an urban planner, I found that your shows about urban planning Central Park, the World's Fair have been my favorite go-tos. You know, more recent shows on license plates and vasectomies helped spur my to-do list of both renewing my registration and, you know, the other thing, too.

Last thing, very happy to hear that you guys are getting back on the road. Any chance for a Central Florida show in the future? Oh, my. Thanks for everything you do. Still trying to get my wife in on the worst-kept secret in podcasting, but one day I'll get to her. Cheers. That is from Mike L. And Mike, in addition to talking about Nashville, I think we're

probably going to want to try another Orlando show this year, right? Yeah, why not? Let's do it. It's going to be a great town. Yeah, so I think we're going to try and make one of our little swings, hometowns shown Atlanta and Orlando, for Josh and then Nashville because it's close and we've never been there. Nashville for princes. Yeah, well, exactly.

Was that Mike? It was Mike L. Mike L. Okay. Thanks a lot, Mike. That was a great email. Thank you for that. We're glad we can help you keep your sanity. And if you want to be like Mike L. and get in touch with us, you can wrap it up in an

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