Fried chicken

THE BEST THING I ATE THIS MONTH – January 2026
Skillet-Fried Chicken

Skillet-Fried Chicken recipe by Bon Appétit Test Kitchen, Bon Appétit magazine, February 2012.

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. (more…)

Midnight Fried Chicken
Midnight Fried Chicken

Midnight Fried Chicken excerpted from Gremlins: The Official Cookbook by Jenn Fujikawa and Erik Burnham.

Gremlins: The Official Cookbook by Jenn Fujikawa and Erik Burnham

Break the most important rule, the rule you can never forget, with fifty recipes in Gremlins: The Official Cookbook. But don’t worry, these snacks, appetizers, main dishes, desserts, and drinks can all be eaten well after midnight.

Gremlins are everywhere, messing with everything—your car, your television, your stereos, those little radios you stick in your ears, your watches, and your cookbooks! You better look out for the little green guys with big teeth running around wrecking things, especially family heirlooms. And while Lynn Peltzer got as many out of her kitchen as possible during Gremlins, the rascally creatures still managed to rough up this Peltzer family cookbook. Thankfully, you can still learn to make family-favourite recipes from snacks to desserts, inspired by the Peltzer’s unbelievable story in Gremlins: The Official Cookbook.

Revisit the events of the zany films through delicious Christmas classics, such as Killer Gingerbread Cookies and Sheriff Frank’s Eggnog, and Kingston Falls favourites, such as Dorry’s Tavern Special, alongside Rand’s notes about his quirky kitchen inventions for Artichoke-Powered Appetizer, Five-Egg Omelet, and Peltzer’s Perfect Mocha.

Gremlins: The Official Cookbook features suggestions for alternate ingredients and tips and tricks if your appliances suddenly go on the fritz—remember, before you call the repairman, turn on all the lights, check all the cupboards, and look under all the pots and pans, because there just might be a gremlin in your kitchen! (more…)

Fried Chicken with Imperial Sauce
Fried Chicken with Imperial Sauce

Fried Chicken with Imperial Sauce excerpted from Win Son Presents A Taiwanese American Cookbook by Josh Ku, Trigg Brown, and Cathy Erway. Photography © 2022 Laura Murray.

Win Son Presents A Taiwanese American Cookbook by Josh Ku, Trigg Brown, and Cathy Erway.

Josh Ku, born in Queens to parents from southern Taiwan, and Trigg Brown, a native Virginian whose mentor was a Taiwanese-American chef, forged a friendship over food—specifically, excellent tsang ying tou, or “flies’ head,” a dish of chopped budding chives kissed with pork fat. Their obsession with Taiwanese food and culture propelled them to open Win Son together in 2016. The East Williamsburg restaurant quickly established itself as a destination and often incurs long waits for its vibrant and flavourful Taiwanese-American cuisine.

Ku and Brown have teamed up with Cathy Erway, Taiwanese food expert and celebrated writer, to create this book which explores and celebrates the cuisine of Taiwan and its ever-simmering pot of creative influences. Told through the eyes, taste buds, travels, and busy lives of Ku, Brown, and Erway, this book brings the cuisine of this misunderstood island nation into the spotlight. With 100 creative, yet accessible recipes, this book will unravel the history of this diaspora cuisine. While featuring classic dishes and well-known favourites, this cookbook also stretches this cuisine’s definition, introducing new dishes with brazen twists that are fun, flavourful, and decidedly American-born in style.  (more…)

Honey-fried chicken
Honey Fried Chicken

Honey Fried Chicken excerpted from The Chicken Shack: Over 65 cluckin’ good recipes that showcase the best ways to enjoy chicken.

The Chicken Shack: Over 65 cluckin' good recipes that showcase the best ways to enjoy chicken.

Entertaining a crowd? Serve up an impressive Garlic Butter Roast Chicken, or an appetizer of Chicken Caesar Sliders Wrapped in Parma Ham. Looking for some classic dishes for the family? Look no further than Grilled Chicken Burgers, Chicken Quesadillas, and Spanish-Style Chicken & Rice.

In search of something comforting after a long day? Perhaps opt for Chicken Noodle Soup, or Extra-Crunchy Crumbed Wings. Or if you want something hot and spicy, Red Hot Buffalo Wings and Jerk Chicken may be exactly what you need.

Take this book under your wing, and find chicken recipes for all tastes and occasions.

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Ben’s Spicy Fried Chicken
Ben’s Spicy Fried Chicken

Ben’s Spicy Fried Chicken excerpted from Jeremy Pang’s School of Wok. Photography by Kris Kirkham.

Jeremy Pang's School of Wok

Bringing together the best Asian flavours from across the continent, this book is a combination of quick-fire, easy meals that take as little as 15 minutes to cook. From lavish suppers for lavish weekend suppers to family feasts with a bit more flair, Jeremy Pang’s School of Wok contains the tips and tricks you need to make the world of Asian cooking easily accessible so you never have to resort to a fakeaway ever again.

Most recipes in the book utilize the ‘wok clock’ technique, where the ingredients are laid out in a clock formation in the order they will be cooked for complete simplicity. Wok Wednesdays and Flavor Fridays, all seen on the School of Wok Youtube channel, are also featured.

Recipes include:

  • Black Pepper Hong Kong Beef
  • BBQ Pork Bao
  • Vegan Pad Thai
  • Pork and Prawn Wontons in Homemade Sichuan Chilli Oil
  • Sweet and Sour Crispy Cauliflower
  • Coming from three generations of Chinese cooks, chef, author and TV presenter

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Jollof Fried Chicken
Jollof Fried Chicken

Jollof Fried Chicken, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen: An Introduction to New African Cuisine – From Ghana With Love by Zoe Adjonyoh. Photography by Nassima Rothacker.

Zoe's Ghana Kitchen: An Introduction to New African Cuisine – From Ghana With Love

Celebrated cook and writer Zoe Adjonyoh passionately believes we are on the cusp of an African food revolution. First published to widespread acclaim in the United Kingdom, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen began as a pop-up restaurant in London featuring dishes such as Pan-Roasted Cod with Grains of Paradise, Nkruma (Okra) Tempura, Cubeb-Spiced Shortbread, and Coconut and Cassava Cake. Soon those dishes evolved into this tempting and celebratory cookbook, newly revised and updated for American cooks.

Join Zoe as she shares the beauty of Ghana’s markets, culture, and cuisine, and tells the evocative story of using these tastes and food traditions to navigate her own identity. Whether you are familiar with the delights of Ghanaian cuisine or new to the bold flavours of West Africa, this book contains inspiration for extraordinary home cooking, in dishes such as:

  • Simple Fried Plantains
  • Red Red Stew
  • Red Snapper and Yam Croquettes
  • Bofrot Doughnuts
  • Nkatsenkwan (Peanut Butter Stew with Lamb)
  • Jollof Fried Chicken
  • Ghana-fied Caesar Salad
  • and more 

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Malaysian Fried Chicken
Malaysian Fried Chicken

Malaysian Fried Chicken, excerpted from Sambal Shiok: The Malaysian Cookbook by Mandy Yin. Photography by Louise Hagger

Sambal Shiok: The Malaysian Cookbook

Sambal Shiok is a brilliant collection of over 90 accessible recipes that were handed down from Mandy Yin’s mother as well as those that she has developed for her critically acclaimed, award-winning London restaurant. The recipes—such as her signature curry laksa, Penang assam laksa, Malaysian fried chicken, prawn fritters, spiral curry puffs, flaky roti canai, beef rendang, KL golden fragrant clams, sambal mapo tofu, and the perfect steamed rice—can be made for a weekday family meal, a dinner party or celebration.

Malaysian food results from the unique merger over centuries of indigenous Malay ingredients with Indian spices and Chinese techniques. Every dish delicately balances sweet, sour, salty with chilli heat and a hint of bitter. With Mandy’s evocative look at Malaysian food culture, her recipes, and the basics of a Malaysian pantry (shrimp paste, lemongrass, tamarind and coconut milk), you can easily enjoy the most delicious Malaysian meals at home.

Sambal Shiok: The Malaysian Cookbook is available at Amazon.com and Indigo.ca.  (more…)

Taiwanese Fried Chicken
Taiwanese Fried Chicken

Taiwanese Fried Chicken, The Double Happiness Cookbook by Trevor Lui. Photography by Suech + Beck.

The Double Happiness Cookbook: 88 Feel-Good Recipes and Food Stories

Toronto is a renowned food mecca, born out of a cultural identity defined by the unified culinary tradition of a vibrant multicultural community. It is a city that has shaped and defined one passionate chef who abandoned his corporate job to throw on an apron and to get into the kitchen, behind the bar, and in front of diners.

Almost immediately, his Taiwanese fried chicken was voted best in the city, fans queued for his notorious ramen burger, and his sensational Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich brought in the masses.

The Double Happiness Cookbook is a riveting exploration of Trevor Lui’s tireless culinary journey that began in the kitchen of a family restaurant with sweet and sour chicken balls and chow mein and eventually drew inspiration from the streets of Toronto, LA, New York, and Taiwan.

Featuring feel-good, Asian-inspired recipes with a big-city attitude—think BBQ pork on rice, bulgogi beef tostadas, sweet chili cauliflower wings, and ramen with L.A. Kalbi—this heartening cookbook is an authentic celebration of heritage, community, street culture, and food philosophy. It is eighty-eight recipes, eight compelling stories, and one man’s dream.

The Double Happiness Cookbook: 88 Feel-Good Recipes and Food Stories is available at Amazon.com and Indigo.ca.   (more…)

Skillet-Fried Chicken
Skillet Fried Chicken

Skillet Fried Chicken, The Hot Chicken Project by Aaron Turner. Photography by Julian Kingma.

The Hot Chicken Project is more than the sum of its parts. Yes, it’s a cookbook, but it’s also a narrative, a photographic celebration and most importantly, it’s Aaron Turner’s love letter to his obsession. This book is about immersing yourself into the world of hot chicken. So, to plunge you into this journey along with Aaron, we have a fun offer.

For acclaimed Australian chef Aaron Turner, hot chicken isn’t just food—it’s salvation in crispy, fried and devilishly spicy form. In The Hot Chicken Project, he travels back to Nashville, the place of its birth, to pay his respects to the makers, to chart the love and obsession that has shaped his world, and to make sure that what he does back home is doing it justice. Part cookbook, part pilgrimage, The Hot Chicken Project is both an epic love letter to the fiery bird and a celebration of a way of life that is in danger of vanishing forever.

The Hot Chicken Project is part recipe book (40 recipes covering the best mains, sandwiches, sides, salads and sauces), part narrative, part pictorial celebration of the history and power hot chicken holds over the city of Nashville—and now beyond (including Melbourne!). (more…)