Spring Chicken, Fried
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean and prepare the spring chicken.
Season the chicken with coarse sea salt.
Fry the chicken until it is about three-fourths cooked.
If using a whole chicken, break the neck and both legs, then fold them around the body.
Roll the chicken tightly and tie it with string.
Pack and seal
Place the chicken in a hot quart glass jar or enameled tin can.
Pour the hot frying liquid over the chicken.
Place the rubber and cap on the jar, but do not tighten.
For tin cans, cap and tip them.
Sterilize
Sterilize according to your method: 90 minutes in a water bath, 60 minutes in a water seal at 214°F, 40 minutes at 5 pounds steam pressure, or 30 minutes at 10 to 15 pounds steam pressure.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Spring chicken
- Provides the meat that is cooked, preserved and tenderised in the jar.
- Oil for frying
- Cooks the chicken through heat transfer and gives it a browned, fried surface.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the chicken and adds savoury flavour to the meat.
The step that matters
Sterilize for the full time at the correct pressure or temperature. Sterilizing must reach a high enough temperature for long enough to destroy spoilage microbes in the sealed chicken. Shorter times or lower heat can leave survivors that spoil the jar, so follow the time that matches your method exactly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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