Mrs. Ronie Venables made honorable-mention in the first annual “National Chicken Cooking Contest” at the Delmarva Chicken Festival in 1949. Were she able to prepare her fried chicken on a wood-burning stove, she told a Universal Press reporter, she could have beaten out Mrs. A.L. Karlik for first place. The Press reporter contrasted the two…
In his 1951 history of Baltimore, “The Amiable Baltimoreans,” F. F. Beirne admitted that “in spite of all the enthusiastic praise of chicken á la Maryland, the scandal is that few persons even in Baltimore actually know what it is.”
“The disservice done the public by commercially fried chicken is perpetuating the fallacy that Southern fried, by definition, is crisp, crunchy, and deep fried. There is more to it than that, for there are other ways to fry a chicken. So how does a Southerner fry chicken at home? He coats the disjointed chicken with…