ISSUE 36, PICNIC, Part 2: Cold Fried Chicken
Cold Fried Chicken
Sometime in the 1950s—well before KFC and Popeye’s appeared on the scene—cold fried chicken became the favorite main dish in the picnic basket. The classic mid-20th century picnic chicken employed a simple flour and paprika coating fried in vegetable oil If there was a secret ingredient it was lemon juice added to the milk and egg wet dip that you doused the chicken in before rolling it in the dry coating. The chicken was usually dried 30 minutes before a second roll in the flour coating. By the end of the 20th century a world of elaborations went into home prepared chicken—buttermilk in the wash, panko breadcrumbs, or cornflakes, or rice flour (for tempura fried chicken)—and a panoply of spices, particularly New Orleans blends. But the greatest alteration is the tendency to purchase and carry franchise chicken on picnics.
The second great innovation in picnic cold fried chicken was providing dipping sauces to ramp up the flavor and variety. When Hidden Valley Ranch Style Dressing became nationally popular, numbers of people began playing with it—making it a flavor of Doritos for instance. There was something about the buttermilk base that married with crispy textures. The 1980s saw the first large scale employement of ranch style dressing as a dipping sauce. Sweet barbecue sauce also emerged at this juncture as a popular dip for fried chicken, though some found it cloyingly sweet. [Interestingly the 21st century would see a substantial component of the sweet barbecue people migrate to sweet thai chili sauce as a dip.] The popularity of chicken satay in Thai restaurants cause people shortly after 2000 to create. Peanut sauce for cold fried chicken. In the south some African American famiies referencing African chicken peanut stews began using hot peanut sauce for fried chicken.
Cold Fried Chicken Salad carried in a Tupperware tub was the other popular late 20th century wrinkle in picnic food. Newspapers in the 1980s began promoting Fried Chicken Salad—with romaine, cucumbers, and cut grilled corn and pecans. In the 1990s a version with cubes of cheddar enjoyed a similar flash of enthusiasm. The 21st century swapped out romaine for arugula, fennel, and even iceberg lettuce.