In more recent years, I have become more conscious of the need to avoid fried foods, so we more often have chicken either baked, broiled or barbecued.
Broiled Chicken
Preheat broiler or grill. Split a young chicken (1 1/4 – 2 lbs). Place on broiler rack 3-3 1/2 inches from heat skin side down. Brush well with butter. Broil slowly so chicken just begins to brown at the end of 10-12 minutes. Turn. Brush with melted butter every 10 mins as browning increases. Broil until tender and evenly browned – about 30-45 minutes. Chicken is done when the meat of a drumstick is tender and it has lost all pink color.
Barbecue sauce may be added as the chicken browns. We also learned from Ken Black, a young GI we met, that the cooking time could be decreased by pre-boiling the chicken before putting it on the broiler or on the grill.
“Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to cloth him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and in the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.”
Isaiah 58: 7-8 pictures the kind of hospitality I saw demonstrated over and over again during the years we lived in the Sand Hills. No one ever stopped at a home without being well fed. It seemed to an unwritten law to help one another. I thought at first that it was because I was the young single school teacher but I learned that was not true.
Next time, I will tell you a funny story about my landlord, Everette Leeper and Jimmy PeCorney….
Fireside Stories 