It's Friday and I want some Hot Chicken!

Well, it's been a great week.  Much has been finished.  The nursery doesn't look like a construction zone anymore, kitchen is kinda cleaned up, Egypt is celebrating and I'm hungry.  What better way to stave off the cold than with a plateful of Prince's Hot Chicken?  I can't think of anything much better right now.  So, I gear up to head over to Prince's but call Mrs. K and ask if anyone in her office wanted any while I was out there.  They couldn't resist either.  Now, let me just let you Non-Nashville folks in on something.  Prince's Hot Chicken to me is like bacon.  It's absolutely delicious in all its greasiness and fattiness, you don't want to eat it every day and when the craving gets to the point where you have to have it.  You just go out and get some.  Today was the day.

Now, strangely enough, the first time I ever had Hot Chicken was when I was 15 years old and staying with my brother on the South Side of Chicago when he was an undergrad at The University of Chicago.  He took me to this kinda run down strip mall with a Bi-Lo grocery store.  We walk into this place called Harold's Chicken King and walk up to the bullet proof window, place our orders for "Wings, Hot and Fries", put our money onto one of those bullet proof polycarbonate encased lazy Susans and give it a spin so the cashier could make change and give us a greasy thumb printed ticket with our order number on it.  Behind us was a Coke machine, only this very special machine didn't dispense any Coca Cola.  Rather, it vended 1 litre bottles of NeHi.  Just like Radar O'Reilly drank on MASH!  Sweet.  Well, we bypass the NeHi and receive our orders and treck back to the apartment. Oh, did I mention that the parking lot looked like a flock of chickens had simultaneously combusted overhead leaving cleaned off chicken bones scattered about?  I mean, seriously, there were like thousands of chicken bones all over the place. Fond memories.

So, back at the pad, we open our styrofoam boxes and dig in.  The wings were fantastic, greasy, hot, crispy and plunked down on a pile of salty fries on top of some Bunny White Enriched bread which acted as a sponge for all that old fryer grease, hot sauce and crunchy bits of fried chicken batter.  Now, as instructed by the brother, that bread didn't just serve as a grease catcher.  It served as the best vessel for what he called a "french fry" sandwich.  I mean seriously?  Two meals in one box?  Great stuff. Fond memories.

Fast forward to today.  Very soon after moving to Nashville I caught wind of this Prince's Chicken Place and had to check it out.  Since that first visit I was hooked.  The first time I went I ordered the Hot.  Now, I can stand some heat when it comes to food but this stuff was seriously hot.  I ate there and there was no air conditioning in the middle of summer.  I took two or three bites and broke out into a serious sweat.  The napkins that they give you with the order are the little 3X5 numbers that don't do anything but ......well, they don't do anything.  So, wiping my brow with one was futile and now I got some of that crazy nuclear brickish colored paste on my face and I could stand it no longer.  I ask for a brown paper bag to wrap up my uneaten meal and head home to finish eating in some sort of climate controlled environment where I could eat with some privacy.

Meal done, pain begins.  It hurt.  Badly.  Just percolating in my gut.  It was worth it though!

Okay, anyway.  I order Medium now.  It's hot but it's an enjoyable hot and equally as delicious as the "Hot"  Here is my pictorial on my lunch.  Hope you enjoy as much as I did.  I doubt it though.

Look at the grease permeation on this order.  Looks good, almost transluscent:

This is the cause of that "oil spill"

Yeah!  "French Fry"  sandwich.  Good call, brother.

Our dog got a hold of a little "table scrap"  She was licking her chops for a couple minutes after that:

 Still licking:

Dark meat done, white meat to go.  Can you see all that grease?!

One hour travel time in the car and still hot and crispy.  I don't know how Prince's can manage that:

Done.   I am so fat and finally embracing it!

Hope you all got hungry after that one.  Brother, next time you are in town, we are going to Prince's.  Great stuff!  My tummy hurts.  Oh, by the way, I was doing some research on "Hot Chicken" recipes and you are not going to like what I found.  So, that hot "sauce" they put on the chicken is actually a mixture of LARD and cayenne plus some other various spices and seasonings.  Okay, so, chicken breaded and fried in lard and then slathered with more Lard?????  It tastes so good though.