The following is from the historical memoir The Richest Soil Grows the Deepest Roots, which my mother (Helen Ruth Poss Marr) and I co-authored. Available as paperback and e-book from online retailers, including BookBaby and Amazon (Amazon paperback pre-order, release date October 29, 2021). In this excerpt, Mom reminisces about fried chicken and her mom's hen business, plus our family's fried chicken recipe:
Fried chicken! In my generation, that was one of the first things a Missouri farm girl learned to cook. After we left the farm and had our own families, my sister and I both made fried chicken about once a week for many years.
When I was growing up, we always had chickens, both for eating and for eggs. Every spring, my mother bought new chicks, which were sold by the hundred. At the hatchery, several varieties of chicks were available. Mom usually chose Plymouth Rock, which was a hardy, docile, dual-purpose chicken breed known for both its meat and large brown eggs.[1]
The little downy youngsters lived in our heated brooder house until they grew big enough to go outside in a fenced area. Sometimes a hen would become broody and “sit on eggs” until they hatched. If hen sitting occurred off-season, we might then have ten to twelve little chicks needing care. Heating up the brooder house for such a small number would be a waste of energy, so we brought the chicks indoors to keep warm in a little box. We did the same with ducklings, which we never had in large quantities.
By purchasing chicks every year, Mom always had a regular supply of young chickens for frying. She thinned out the males to dispatch as fryers, keeping the hens for egg laying. The flesh on old hens is too tough for frying, but when hens stopped producing eggs, they were roasted or cooked in soup.
For fried chicken, the birds were slaughtered the same morning they were cooked up. Mom and Dad had different methods for killing chickens. Dad wrung the chicken’s neck until the head separated. Mom used a hatchet and a tree stump. She held the chicken with one hand and chopped with the other. Then the chicken ran around for a while without a head until it dropped dead.
Mom doused the dead chicken in boiling water to make it easier to pluck the feathers. Plucking was done outdoors to avoid a mess in the kitchen. Then she brought the carcass to the kitchen to gut and butcher. Mom always saved and fried up the liver, gizzard, and heart. Sometimes she actually fried the legs, that is the section below the drumstick, including the claw!
Mom also fried up the tiny little brain. With Dad’s typical humor, he vouched for how tiny chicken brains actually were. He said, “They are so stupid they would stand under a clothesline in the pouring rain for shelter.”
Scraps from the butchered chickens were fed to the dogs and cats. My mom put plant-based kitchen scraps, such as potato and carrot peels, in a pie tin. She’d throw the contents over the fence into the chicken yard, and the hens would come running. Though they ate kitchen scraps, the chickens’ main source of food was ground-up corn, called chops. Dad used a grinder that was driven by attaching a belt to a tractor to fill bins with chops, so we would always have a ready supply for the chickens and cows. Sometimes Mom bought chicken feed at the Farley grain elevator co-op, where my parents were members. She usually bought more than one sack at a time. Mom wanted the print on the fabric sacks to match because she used the sacks for dressmaking.
Like most rural women of her era, my mother knew how to sew. She owned a treadle machine on which I learned to sew. Sometime after World War II, as consumer manufacturing ramped up again, Mom purchased an electric sewing machine.
Farm women had been using flour and feed sacks to make clothing for a while, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that a wide variety of print percale sacks became available. Companies marketed the fabric sacks, even providing dress patterns and ideas for home decoration. Started as a promotion by the cotton industry, feed-sack dresses became a resourceful trend during the Great Depression and continued through World War II (Brandes, 2009). Because much of textile production shifted to war efforts, fabric shortages caused store-bought clothing to become scarce. Feed-sack dresses remained popular until the 1950s. I owned several homemade feed-sack dresses, as did some of my friends.
Mom managed her own little business with the chicks, hens, and eggs—she called it her “egg money.” Learning from her, I raised ducks for a few years so I could sell their eggs to make money. One year I had twenty-one ducks. Another season I only had one duck, and it followed me around just like a dog would.
We had guinea fowl for a time, also. They would fly up over the coop and other structures. Guineas are useful fowl to have on a farm, because they protect chickens against predators and also eat pest insects, like ticks, flies, and grubs.
Mom sold chicken eggs to Hathorn’s, a small retail grocer in north Leavenworth. Sometimes I went with her, watching as the manager candled the eggs, holding them up to a light to see if they were good. When my mother was older, she had individual egg customers. My mother-in-law, Tudy Marr, who became good friends with Mom after Mike and I married, would take egg orders for her co-workers at The Leavenworth Times.
On Sunday evenings, we had fried egg sandwiches. (Of all the ways to cook and eat eggs, fried is my favorite.) The main course for Sunday dinner (lunch) was typically fried chicken. When I was growing up, we fried the chicken in lard because the rendered pork fat was usually plentiful on our farm due to raising hogs. Later, my mother started using Crisco. Mom used two fry pans on the stove, one bird per skillet. She dredged chicken pieces in flour and salt, then fried them for about fifteen minutes on each side, turning just once.
Missouri Fried Chicken
Many variations of fried chicken exist, some calling for brining, thick breading, or creole spices. Our family tradition entails no brining and uses very simple dredging with just flour and salt.
Serves 4 (feeds 6 if you serve with the neck, feet, and innards—gizzard, liver, and heart)
Preparing the chicken: Select a young chicken, preferably male if you’re trying to save the hens for egg laying. Use your favorite method to dispatch the chicken. Boil a large pot of water. Dip the chicken in boiling water. Remove feathers, preferably outdoors. Gut, reserving innards and discarding digestive organs. Use your favorite method of butchering.
OR
Skip all these steps, and purchase a cut-up fryer (but you’ll be missing the delicious innards).
1 cut-up fryer
1 C flour
2 tsp salt
1 C lard
1 C whole milk, for gravy
Mix flour and salt in a pie tin or bowl. Melt and heat lard in a large skillet (use two skillets, if necessary). Dredge chicken pieces in the flour-salt mixture. Test that the lard is sufficiently hot by sprinkling a bit of flour in the skillet. It should sizzle. Place the dredged chicken in the hot lard. When the first side is golden brown, in about 15–20 minutes, turn to fry the remaining side. Remove from pan after the second side is golden brown. Total frying time is about 30 minutes. Serve immediately.
To make gravy: Add milk and a couple tablespoons of the dredging flour to the pan, stir until thickened.
[1] From its development in the mid-1800s until World War II, the Plymouth Rock chicken breed was unrivaled in popularity. Today, Plymouth Rock is considered a Heritage breed, endangered but recovering (Livestock Conservancy, n.d.).
