| American-style streamed chicken | | | | every country has a version of streamed |
| relies on a thick, well-seasoned crust, | | | | chicken, or fricassee, from Vietnam's |
| often made even thicker by soaking the | | | | Gà Xaò to Italy's pollo |
| chicken pieces beforehand in buttermilk. | | | | fritto. It is thought that the Scottish |
| When that crust is nubbly and evenly | | | | people who settled the early South |
| browned, and the chicken meat is cooked | | | | introduced the method here in the United |
| through, the chicken is sublime. But too | | | | States. They preferred to fry their |
| often, the flesh is still raw when the | | | | chickens, rather than baking or boiling |
| crust is cooked, or the skin never cooks | | | | them as the English did. It wasn't until |
| all the way through, leaving a flabby | | | | the early 1900s that recipes for fried |
| layer of skin between the meat and the | | | | chicken began appearing in popular |
| crust. | | | | "northern" cookbooks. |
| Korean-style streamed chicken is | | | | Very simply, the chickens are cut up, |
| radically different, reflecting an Asian | | | | dredged in flour, sprinkled with a |
| frying technique that renders out the | | | | little salt, put in a skillet with hot |
| fat in the skin, transforming it into a | | | | fat, and fried until golden brown. |
| thin, crackly and almost transparent | | | | Through the years there have been |
| crust. (Chinese cooks call this | | | | hundreds of attempts to improve upon her |
| “paper fried chicken.”) The | | | | recipe, and plenty of tricks and special |
| chicken is unseasoned, barely dredged in | | | | touches, but they are all simply minor |
| very fine flour and then dipped into a | | | | variations on the original. Mary |
| thin batter before going into the fryer. | | | | Randolph mentions making a gravy with |
| The oil temperature is a relatively low | | | | the "leavings", but the cream |
| 350 degrees, and the chicken is cooked | | | | sauce so often served with streamed |
| in two separate stages. | | | | chicken seems to have originated with |
| Southerners weren't the first people in | | | | the dish "Maryland fried |
| the world to fry their chickens. Almost | | | | chicken". |