A Paula Deen Mothers Day

Cooking with Rachael and Friends

For Mother's Day partner Kate made me a nice little breakfast; croissants, scrambled eggs and ham. That night we had middle daughter Emily, her partner Robin and granddaughter Rachel over for a birthday party for Emily's 34th. Emily & Rach are picky eaters, they like their food bland and childlike. I figured I couldn't go wrong with Paula Deen's Southern Fried Chicken, Cheesy Biscuits, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, and corn on the cob. I'm always worried about chicken being cooked all the way through. Robin, who is an excellent cook, said that even she has trouble with fried chicken - burning it on the outside, while it remains raw on the inside.

First I washed and seasoned the chicken with lots of seasoned salt and a bit of garlic salt and put it back in the fridge for a couple of hours. Then I heated fresh Crisco in two big pans. I made way too much chicken as usual - an entire fryer and a separate package of thighs. As the recipe instructed, I put the pieces in an egg/water mixture, then dredged them in self-rising flour that I'd added lots of fresh ground black pepper to. I fried the pieces until they were golden brown, then put them in baking dishes in the oven for 350 degrees (that last part was a deviation from the recipe, but I wanted to make sure the pieces cooked all the way through and it didn't seem to hurt or alter them in any way.) I left them in the oven for about half an hour while I cleaned up and made the rest of the meal.

The Cheesy Biscuits are the very same ones that Paula Deen serves people waiting in line to get into her restaurant. I messed up though, I didn't remember to save some of the Crisco to put in the biscuits, so had to improvise with butter. They also turned out good, no one seemed especially thrilled by them though. I'm going to retry that recipe again some time with the proper ingredients.

It all turned out very well. The chicken got all around raves. Everyone agreed that it didn't taste greasy at all. I think that some of the grease may have drained out of the pieces while it was heating in the oven. I think that the trick to cooking good fried chicken is having your grease hot enough. Messing with hot grease is always an adventure though. Our little female daschund Maggie was right under foot the entire time and I was worried about her getting spattered. We both ended up covered in flour but didn't get burnt.

The mashed potatoes were from a package at Wal-Mart. Not a box, an actual package of real mashed potatoes in the deli section. No one seemed to notice that they weren't home made, as people can usually tell with boxed, rehydrated potatoes. I also use canned chicken gravy - sorry but I've only ever made real gravy once in my life. I just always use canned and again, everyone seems to like it.

For dessert we made cupcakes and also purchased a little decorated cake for the actually blowing out of the candles. This little square cake was probably about half the size of a 1/4 sheet cake. It was perfectly sized for our group. Usually we get those huge cakes at COSTCO, which are yummy but then everyone has tons of cake left over.