The benevolence of funeral fried chicken

Experiencing fried chicken begins with the eyes. 

Our eyes trail over a side plate or a gargantuan platter of chicken, peering at its golden brown exterior, imagining what the taste will be once we’ve lifted it closer to heaven from our plates. Theories start after small glances. Whether, this time, Auntie Thelma’s fried chicken will be less burnt or if she’ll use a little less of all that damn Lawry’s. If Cousin Charlie will stop volunteering to fry all the chicken knowing he always fries it in grease that is too old and the resulting chicken tells that tale with one sniff and one bite. And perhaps, grandma will choose to fry more than legs because that’s the only piece she has an abundance of in her deep freezer. 

The theorizing quiets as we finally lift that wing, breast, thigh or leg to our mouths, hoping that we’ll be delighted with the crunch of battered and fried bits of flour and chicken we won’t have to mandatorily smatter with salt, pepper and drown in hot sauce to get any real feeling. It is a test, a chicken test. One that speaks to the comfort the simplicity of fried poultry can bring in times of zeal—and also in times of mourning. 

There’s this memory I’ve shared often in my work and I’m gonna share it again: as a Black little girl from the South who was brought up in the Southern Baptist church, I’ve long been attuned with the rituals and rites of grieving our dearly departed. For me, one of the most pivotal and quintessential Southern rites is the repass/repast. My paternal grandfather died in 2011, when the world was starting to quiet and darken for winter. There is not much I remember about that funeral program in church or the graveside interment where several of my other relatives are also buried. 

But I remember vividly though the chicken, the funeral fried chicken. 

My recollection of this chicken floats in my psyche and lingers on my tastebuds. There was something about that chicken that I’ve never tasted in any chicken since. Yes, it was the pleasure of the crunch of the deeply seasoned exterior. And yes, the flavor of it once it had been consumed, sitting on a styrofoam plate like right on time to a festive occasion with some greens and slightly sweetened cornbread. Was it the chicken itself that was incredible or was the collective grief wafting in that hot as hell fellowship hall at church so intense that it was comforting? 

My inclination is that it’s a little of both. Grief is a force for people in general but particularly for Black people. We are a people who have survived violence for generations. Most of us in this country descended from people who have had immense losses with no space to mourn or no one to validate the pain that can come from being bereaved. And as Black folk always do, we turned the lack of support, comfort and humanity into an opportunity to build that for ourselves in a way that is nourishing exactly for us. 

Food is heavily a part of that, of course. One of the first things that is thrown into a cacophony of chaos in the immediacy of loss is our eating habits. Some of us think that grief is only communicated through sadness and melancholia. I have learned in all my years of grieving that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Grief is complex and our bodies roar in response to a loss. There are a litany of somatic responses that we can experience physically when grief enters our life: lack of appetite, an unquenchable appetite where the cravings never seem to end, nausea, diarrhea, body aches and pains, lethargy, headaches, brain fog. These are not coincidental or mere happenstance; our bodies are experiencing the full breadth of grief and respond to it. 

I think our ancestors—along with former generations of family members—understood this. They knew how it felt to be grieving and mourning someone, someplace or something that meant a lot to them when the world widely didn’t care to acknowledge. And they also knew that a meal cooked lovingly could be a balm, a bridge to another tomorrow in hopes that grief would be dimmed, just a little.

These iterations—a death echoing through a neighborhood, community or street in a bustling city and food all of sudden showing up—are proof of this. Because, what could feel better to chomp on than some fried chicken that you didn’t have to cook but someone else did and it tastes sublime? 

Historically and culturally, fried chicken has a defied place as a culinary epitome for Black people. The practice itself of deep frying is an African ancestral practice that migrated with enslaved Africans to the American South. In places like Gordonsville, Virginia, dubbed as the fried chicken capital of the world that now has an annual festival celebrating chicken, frying chicken became an art form, a trade, a skill not everyone could finesse. 

Black women, who were waiter carriers for the railroad, sold fried chicken from train platforms. As the train cars whizzed by, they’d lift plates of chicken into the windows for passengers who had grown hungry. In essence, these Black women built businesses frying. Some of them even earned enough to purchase homes and secure a type of financial independence and stability previously unheard of and unseen following emancipation from chattel slavery. 

Consider this: in reaching for fried chicken while grieving we are paying tribute to their creative survival borne of their talents and passion and our African ancestors who perfected the art of the deep fry. In loss, while honoring our appetites and embarking on a crawl towards comfort we are also honoring those who learned the art of it. An art form that helped them sojourn forward with the grief of what it meant to be Black in a certain time. 

There’s an art to chicken for funerals, too, that I think is too important to not discuss. Fried chicken almost always has a shelf life, tasting best when it’s hot out the grease. When it cools, the breading that once gave a melodious crunch can morph to a soggy mess that cannot be remedied without reheating in the oven or air fryer. But our folk, our people, knew that there were scientific ways around this. 

Between brining in buttermilk for a few hours or even overnight, dusting a little cornstarch in with the flour, letting the chicken rest after being breaded before frying, dropping a little swiggle of buttermilk in the flour itself to create those crunchy, craggy bits that we all love.

This is a practice from experience but of practicality and survival. During the Jim Crow era in the South where it was dangerous for Black families to travel via car they often packed shoebox lunches to sustain them while on the road. If chicken was in those shoeboxes, it was chicken that tasted good even when cold. Because of the intentional approach to it. 

The Aunties and church mothers undoubtedly incorporated this into their funeral fried chicken preparation process. Beyond who would be tasked to prepare the chicken in general, they cooked the chicken ahead of time. Pulling chicken straight from the grease when you have hordes of family members hungry and weary ready to eat after a long day is impractical.

They prepared chicken hours in advance and layered them in those massive aluminum chafing pans with sterno flickering underneath, ready to be distributed to plates and heavy hearts. These pieces of chicken could withstand being a little cold in some spots—and could survive being transported home at the end of the day for a midnight snack straight from the fridge. 

There are so many things that could be the centerpiece of a bereavement meal but for me, and so many others, fried chicken simply feels right. It is the perfect fusion of Black history, ancestral wisdom and culinary expertise. Somehow, in the fluidity of movement with our arms and hands to dredge chicken in flour, we end up sculpting a dish that etches a little reassurance on our soul. That us, too, even in times of immeasurable sadness can be filled, even if it’s just with a fried chicken wing dunked in hot sauce. 

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