Biscuits, Part 2

Or: what to do with all that leftover buttermilk.

NOTE: Hopefully, you’ve arrived here after reading my previous story — the groundbreaking and universally adored Biscuits, Part 1 — having made a batch of Nathan’s Incredible Biscuits, and been left with a bunch of leftover buttermilk. If you haven’t (read, made, or been left), please feel encouraged (pressured) to go back and do so now.

One of the consequences of making Nathan’s Incredible Biscuits is that you’ll likely end up with a lot of excess buttermilk. If you don’t live in a household that regularly uses it, or you don’t know what to do with it, this buttermilk may end up going to waste. Concerned about the ethics of publishing a recipe with such implications, I called my friend Ben.

“Is it stupid to have people buy a whole thing of buttermilk?” I asked, thinking of all the pints and quarts of buttermilk that have rotted in my fridge.

“No, just tell them to toss a couple chicken thighs in the buttermilk, fry them up the next day to eat with their biscuits,” he replied. There was a pause. Not a horrible idea (surprising coming from Ben who is usually full of “stinkers,” and I’m not talking only about farts). “And then,” he said, getting excited, “if there’s still buttermilk left, well, you could just have them make ranch dressing.” Another pause. I was in shock. Ben was firing on all cylinders (again, surprising, as he’s most often either stalled or “asleep behind the wheel”). “And if you think about it,” he continued, “all of those things sound… prettttyyy goood together…..”

My god. Ben was right (the ultimate surprise, as I can scarcely remember a time he wasn’t wrong) — all those things did sound good together. Now reeling with ideas, I was distracted for the rest of the conversation; Ben went on for a while about how much he looks up to me, and eventually I hung up the phone. I looked down at the near-full quart of buttermilk in my hand. Against all better judgment, I decided to take Ben’s advice. I decided to make:

A Whole Fried Leg of Chicken:

Note: You should ideally soak your chicken the day before you plan to eat. Some people brine their chicken and then soak it in buttermilk. I’ve always combined the two steps, making a salty, buttermilk/pickly/spicy/spiced brine for my chicken to sleep in overnight. I eyeball the amounts in the soak — you just want equal parts buttermilk to brine, and enough liquid to cover the chicken.

For the soak:

• 1 bone-in chicken leg

• ½ cup buttermilk

• ½ cup pickle juice (jalapeño / cucumber / onion / whatever brine… olive?)

• Salt

• Hot Sauce

• Seasoning (taco seasoning and/or ranch seasoning and/or garlic and onion powder and/or black pepper and/or chili… or whatever seasoning you want. The spice mixes are kind of nice because you don’t have to open a million jars but make it to your taste).

For the breading:

• 1-2 cup all purpose flour

• Seasoning (some ideas: taco seasoning, ranch seasoning, buffalo seasoning, garlic and onion powder, black pepper, paprika, chile, whatever seasoning you want, Jesus.)

• Salt

For the fry:

• Neutral oil (corn, canola, vegetable)

• Frying vessel (I used a saucepan for my one chicken leg, but you could use a cast iron pan or dutch oven if you’re making a bigger batch)

• Thermometer (helpful, but not totally necessary if you’re like a genius or something. I just used my thermapen)

• Cooling rack and sheet tray

Process:

1. In a bowl, mix about a half cup of buttermilk with the same amount of pickle juice. Stir in a few heavy dashes of your favorite hot sauce, a few big pinches of salt, and whatever seasonings you like (can go as light or heavy here as you like).

2. Salt the oh fuck I forgot to tell you how to bone out a chicken leg. Good skill to have. So:

3. Flip the chicken leg so that the skin side is facing down. Your goal is to find the bone that runs long ways through the thigh and connects with the bone that runs the length of the drumstick, and then to carefully remove all the leg meat from those bones in one piece. So: using a sharp paring or boning knife, lightly run the knife down the middle of the thigh and drumstick meat (hot dog style), to expose the bone. Once you’ve exposed the bone, run your knife along either side, separating them from the meat (making sure not to cut all the way through the meat to the board, just enough to separate it). At this point, I like to grab the exposed bone with two fingers, carefully slide my knife underneath it and cut down the length bone, removing the meat but leaving any tendons behind. I’m getting tired just writing this. Once one bone is free, repeat the same process on the other piece of meat. Next, scrape any remaining meat off the bones until the only meat left is attached to the joint that connects the two bones. Carefully cut around that joint, leaving behind any hard bits. Be careful not to tear the thin section of skin that covers the joint. When you’re done, you should have one piece of boneless leg and thigh meat in one hand, and the two-boned structure in the other. Did you do it? Sick! You just boned out a chicken leg! Great for grilling under a foil-wrapped brick or in a cast iron, or, I guess, for frying.

4. Phew, that sucked.

5. Salt the chicken leg generously, as if you were going to grill or pan fry it. This is kind of just an insurance policy that there’s enough salt in the brine to fully season your chicken. I’m not sure if it even makes sense. I mean, you could just make sure you put enough salt in your buttermilk mixture in the first place. Whatever.

6. Place your boneless chicken leg in buttermilk brine, and let soak in the fridge for at least 6 hours, ideally overnight.

7. Remove chicken from the fridge an hour or so before you plan to fry it.

8. Damn this is so many steps. Please tell me if you make this.

9. Set a sauce pan of oil (just enough to cover the chicken and not more than ½ of the way up the side of the pan — don’t want it to overflow and set your house on fire and potentially even kill you or your loved ones) over a low flame, aiming to bring it up to 375 degrees.

10. Meanwhile, mix your flour with your salt and as much and whatever seasonings you like in either in a bowl or a small bag (if you don’t want to do more dishes). You probably want 1-2 cups of this mixture.

11. Lift your chicken from its brine and place into the seasoned flour. It’s okay to bring some drippy liquid with it. In fact, splash a little bit of that brine into the flour — the moisture will help make your fried chicken craggy with little crunchy nuggets. Press the flour into your chicken, finding any places that are still moist or un-breaded and smushing more flour into them. In the end, it should already look shaggy and be completely covered in seasoned flour.

12. Once the oil reaches 375, carefully drop your chicken into it.

13. Your goal is to lower the temperature of the oil (using the room temp chicken) to 350 degrees and to keep it there through the entire process. 350 degrees is a reliable temperature for frying because the inside should be done just as the outside is becoming perfectly golden brown. You might have to adjust the flame a few times during the cooking (the temperature of the oil will be quick-changing, as there’s not that much of it)

14. Cook the chicken at 350 until deeply golden brown. Remove to a wire rack placed inside of a sheet tray, and season immediately with salt.

15. Let cool a bit, then eaton it’s own or make some of:

Process shots for a whole fried leg of chicken

Ben’s Buttermilk Ranch:

Note: Written by Ben with edits by Cody for clarity.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup buttermilk

• 1/2 cup creme fraiche or sour cream

• 1/2 homemade mayo or high quality store bought (Ben likes Duke’s)

• 3 tablespoons freshly chopped dill ( or 1 tablespoon dry dill)

• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced chives (as small as you can cut ‘em)

• 1/2 tablespoon onion powder

• 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

• 1/4 tablespoon smoked paprika

• Couple nice turns on the pepper grinder

• Couple healthy pinches of salt

• 1 -2 (depending on what consistency you like) tablespoons of light-colored vinegar of your choosing (I like white wine vinegar)

• *optional add on: a splash of a nice hot sauce. I love a nice smokey hot sauce for this.

  • Cody note: you could also use ranch seasoning instead of Ben’s proprietary blend spices, if you’d rather.

Process:

1. Mix all the ingredients together, thinning the mayonnaise with buttermilk until it’s a little thicker than you want the final dressing to be.

2. Add lemon juice or vinegar until it’s bright to your liking. Make it taste good… add salt if it needs it, more seasoning if it needs it. As Ben says: “ make sure you taste it and make it taste the way you like it to taste! Super important step :)”

Come onnnn, just dip your fried chicken in the ranch already. Or, if you’re feeling sad or generally want to punish yourself, you could turn all this into:

Ben's buttermilk ranch and a slaw in the making.

Cody’s Fried Chicken Sandwich For A Sad Day:

Ingredients:

• 1 biscuit

• A whole fried leg of chicken

• A cup of ranch

• Shredded cabbage

• Jalapeños and pickles

• Hot sauce

Process:

1. Mix the cabbage and the ranch. Add some salt and / or vinegar as needed.

2. Make a fucked up sandwich. Try to forget about the things that trouble you. You can’t, can you………

This sandwich is, of course, absolutely awesome. But it’s gnarly. Next time, if I needed a sad sandwich, I’d just stuff a hot biscuit with a big scoop of ice cream (truly — this is very much worth trying), and save this precious ranch for some wangs or pizza. As far as the fried chicken, I’d probably just turn that into:

A big, difficult sandwich for a big, difficult boy.

My Famous Fried Chicken Salad:

Note: I fear you could also make this with leftover rib meat instead and it would be awesome. This is based off of Ben’s father’s recipe for Ham Salad, so not so far off.

Ingredients:

• Finely diced fried chicken (picked off the bone) (can use leftover fried chicken for this)

• Mayo (homemade or high quality store bought)

• Flavors you like — mustard, hot sauce, pickle relish, giardiniera…

• Celery salt (its okay if you don’t have this)

• Freshly ground black pepper

• Diced onion

• Diced celery

Process:

1. Mix all the ingredients together. Taste it. Smush it around. Taste it again. Add more of whatever you want until it tastes good. Put it in the fridge for a while. Taste it again. How is it? Too dry? Add some mayo. Too heavy? Add some lemon or vinegar, or more onion or celery. Does it have enough salt? Is it spicy enough? Some mustard sounds good in there…. you get the point. Make it taste good.

2. Enjoy with Ritz crackers or as a sandwich on the softest white bread you can find.

   

   My famous fried chicken salad

If you’ve made all of the above, you should only have, what — half a quart of buttermilk left? Seems like it’s impossible to use that whole carton sometimes. But hey — it’s a good excuse to make some more biscuits. Speaking of, you might have noticed that Biscuits, Part 2 didn’t really have much to do with biscuits. Don’t worry, my highly anticipated Biscuits, Part 3 — full of biscuit theory, exploration, and experiments — is coming soon.

Happy eating,
Cody