The Best Thing I Ate This Month
Skillet Fried Chicken, the Bon Appétit recipe that never lets me down

There are fancier things to cook this time of year. Dishes with pedigrees. Garnishes that require tweezers. Sauces that simmer for hours only to reduce into a glossy whisper you can barely taste.

And then there is fried chicken.

Not just any fried chicken, but the skillet fried chicken from Bon Appétit, a recipe I have been cooking for more than a decade. It has been with me so long it no longer reads like instructions on a page. It feels more like muscle memory. Like tying your shoes. Like calling someone you love without thinking twice.

Every year, I make it for my annual Southern Dinner with friends, a loose, comfort heavy spread that leans Southern in spirit but fully Canadian in execution. The table is gloriously crowded, bottles, bowls, and elbows fighting for space like nobody bothered with a seating chart. This chicken is the centrepiece. Not the mac and cheese. Not the dessert. Not whatever sad green vegetable I toss in to look like an adult. The chicken.

It arrives in a heavy cast iron pan, lacquered and craggy, the crust the colour of maple syrup. You hear it before you see it, a faint, steady crackle as it settles onto the table, still whispering from the oil. Conversations stall. Hands hover. That little ripple of gasps and cheers is my first review.

The recipe does not try to reinvent anything. It understands the assignment. Buttermilk. Salt. Pepper. Spices. Flour. Heat. Time. The old grammar of comfort cooking. Simple. Direct. Effective.

What makes it special is the texture. The crust shatters, not crunches. It flakes like pastry, delicate and brittle at the same time. Underneath, the meat stays improbably juicy, the kind that runs down your wrist and makes you reach for a napkin too late. It feels generous, almost indecently so.

Over time, this chicken has developed a reputation. Friends expect it the way you expect the lights to turn on, and they would have my hide if it were not on the table. I use it, too, as my preferred form of gratitude for employees, because fried chicken says thank you far better than corporate language ever could. From there it makes the rounds, colleagues and whoever else is nearby falling just as hard. Years later, people who have left for shinier jobs still bring it up, like it was less a meal than an era. Its legend usually arrives before I do.

There is no secret behind any of this. Just care. Let it marinate long enough. Heat the oil properly. Do not rush. Stay close. Listen.

It is not flashy cooking. It is watchful cooking. The kind where you stand at the stove turning each piece by hand, tending the pan like a small fire against the cold outside.

Meanwhile, everyone on TikTok is chasing the next big thing, the newest ingredient, the latest viral recipe. The platform moves fast and novelty is king. And yet, the best thing I ate this month was something I have cooked and shared many times before.

Because sometimes the best thing is not new at all.

Sometimes it is the dish that shows up year after year, gathers people around a table, and keeps them there long after the plates are empty.

Sometimes it is just a skillet of fried chicken, passed between friends, fingers greasy, stories getting louder, the room warm with the simple fact that everyone is fed and nobody is in a hurry to leave.

If that is not what cooking is for, I am not sure what is.