Culinary historian Michael W. Twitty lives and breathes Southern food. “My first solid food was potlikker and cornbread,” Twitty says, “before I even had teeth.” Twitty earned a reputation as a scholar of Southern food through his first two books—his James Beard Award-winning debut, The Cooking Gene, and his 2021 deep-dive, Rice. Now, he’s back with his third, most ambitious book, a tome of Southern recipes called Recipes From the American South.
“[The book] is meant to celebrate the American South,” Twitty explains. “However, I didn’t really mean for this cookbook to be a manual, a book of spells. I wanted it to really be a journey, a record. I think it’s important to read it first for the information, second for the recipes.”
This cookbook may not be a book of spells, but some of the information within was eye-opening for me. In particular, Twitty says that he never seasons the dredging flour for dishes like fried chicken or fried fish. Here’s why he skips this traditional step.
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Why You Shouldn’t Season Flour for Fried Chicken
“I don’t season the flour,” Twitty explains. “That’s a consistent aspect of this cookbook. I do not season the flour because it will burn, and it gives a burnt look to the crust that we don’t want.”
He acknowledges that proper seasoning is essential, and says he seasons the meat before it’s dredged in flour, keeping the spices safely away from the heat of the oil. The result: a perfectly fried piece of chicken, fish, or vegetables with layers of seasoning built in.
For Twitty’s Southern Fried Chicken, which is based on his own family’s recipe, Twitty delivers the seasoning via the buttermilk marinade that chicken pieces soak in for 4 to 12 hours. That marinade is loaded with paprika, poultry seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, and pepper. Once the chicken has marinated, it gets dipped in a simple mix of all-purpose flour and cornmeal for a crunchy exterior with no burnt bits. You can see this approach in his other recipes, too, including Twitty’s Fried Fish, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Fried Shrimp.
Frying foods can be intimidating for home cooks, likely because there are several different steps (i.e., opportunities for things to go wrong). If you haven’t made fried chicken in a while, though, it’s worth a second shot. This tip, like so much of the wisdom in Recipes From the American South, is rooted in knowledge that’s been passed down for generations. It’s a clever way to avoid the dreaded burn while still producing a perfectly seasoned final product.
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Why I Love This Cookbook
Recipes From the American South is the kind of legacy cookbook that deserves a spot on the shelf between Julia Child and Joy of Cooking. In it, you’ll find recipes you might expect—Fried Chicken, Succotash, and Collard Greens—among many surprises, like Sephardic Pink Rice and Chinese Mississippi Collard Greens. That juxtaposition is by design. Twitty says he wanted this cookbook to express that the South isn’t a monolith.
“Southern food is not one thing. I don’t want to pass on that curse of, ‘if you don’t have this, then it’s not real, or it’s inauthentic.’” says Twitty. “I’ve often made the point in the book about variations, so that people understand that 30 miles away, somebody was making this exact same dish, and it was very different.”
Find Recipes From the American South on Bookshop.org or at your local bookseller.
