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If it ain't fried, it ain't worth eating
By Melinda Ennis

If it ain't fried, it ain't worth eating By Melinda Ennis

In this age of Cuisinarts, woks and microwaves, a beloved Southern cooking utensil, the frying pan, is following bacon-and-egg breakfasts into cultural oblivion.

The very word "frying" is becoming taboo in today's culture.

The world's leading chicken chain (the one with the Colonel) has eliminated it from its logo. Kentucky Fried Chicken now goes by KFC to avoid using "fried" in its name and has gotten rid of the "f" word in all its advertising. Do KFC outlets still fry chicken? Of course they do, but they don't think the public needs reminding.

So while folks still eat fried foods, they just don't talk about it. To declare proudly that you like nothing better than a fried chicken dinner, accompanied by a mound of mashed potatoes swimming in gravy, is like bragging about smoking or, heaven forbid, admitting that you don't work out.

Almost all the fast-food chains that still specialize in fried chicken are based in the South, where frying is dying the hardest death.

But as someone who has worked in the fast-food business for many years, I know every one of these companies is desperately seeking menu items that will someday replace their fried products.

The problem is, it's hard to find anything that tastes as good.

Over the years, this industry has introduced everything from salad bars to rotisserie chicken, based on market research that says that more and more customers are "just saying no" to fried. Unfortunately, a salad loaded with Thousand Islands dressing or a juicy, rotisserie chicken usually have just as much fat as the fried stuff. And, so far, the mass- market demand for tofu is not enough to sustain any fast-food joint.

Southern frying has also died in many Southern homes. When I was growing up in suburban Memphis, fried foods were still prepared at home regularly, especially on Sunday night. To this day, the tick, tick, tick of the "60 Minutes" clock still makes me hungry for a country-fried steak and gravy dinner.

My mother had a series of big black iron skillets that she used to make these sinful dishes. The deep one was for chicken, the big flat one for pork chops, and the small round one for corn bread. The batter was poured into the skillet after a good coating of grease.

I now use the black skillet my mother gave me as a door stop. I truly love her cooking, but like others of my generation, I have been indoctrinated to believe that enjoying a diet of fried foods is like consuming arsenic.

We are continually reminded by a battery of scientific studies that the fat content in these foods will harden your arteries, stop your heart or give you cancer. So, when we do commit the sin of eating fried, we feel the grim reaper wringing his hands in delight with every swallow.

Now, I know that all these scientists must know something and that they're really trying to help. But how many years should one deduct for a weekly indulgence of Varsity onion rings? And as a defense against these dire warnings, we all have stories about relatives who ate nothing but fried, yet lived to old age.

My mother loves to talk about my great-grandmother, who fried a chicken for breakfast every morning for her family. This person, whom I remember as a gentle, Bible-quoting old woman, would go out in the yard, select an unsuspecting bird and wring its neck with her sweet little hands. She would then clean, pluck and fry it up, all before 8 a.m. She lived to be 94 and, to my knowledge, never had a bean sprout in her life.

This brings to mind another factor in the demise of home frying.

While modern grocery stores have ended the need for a daily chicken execution, frying anything is a lot of trouble. With over 70 percent of all women working outside the home, few have the time or energy to cook at all, much less fry a plate of pork chops and clean up the mess.

If we make chicken on a night after work, it's often zapped instead of fried. In fact, most of us live in fear that another scientific study will uncover the evils of microwaving.

Even as women like my great-grandmother pass away, I believe Southerners will always have a taste for fried food. We try not to worry about those bits of fat coursing through our veins.

We find solace in stories like the one about my great-grandmother.

They're comforting when we break down and satisfy the craving with an occasional fix of fried. Practically speaking, today's chefs have created pretty good "Nouvelle Southern Cuisine" dishes to replace Grandma's deadly recipes.

But I'm still secretly hoping for the day when a new study reveals that fried foods improve health and increase life expectancy. On that great day, that most wonderful of aromas, bacon frying in the pan, will once again waft through the land.

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