To find the country’s best fried chicken, a visit with John T. Edge of the University of Mississippi is a must. At least according to Tyler Florence, founding executive chef of Manhattan’s critically acclaimed Cafeteria restaurant and host of the Food Network program Tyler’s Ultimate. Edge, food writer and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center, appears on a Tyler’s Ultimate episode being aired this winter. A segment of the program was taped in Edge’s Oxford backyard, where he demonstrated his chicken-frying know-how for the camera. Edge and Florence also visited Pontotoc County chicken farmer Ron Brandon at his Zion farms and sampled the fried chicken at Oxford’s Yocona River Inn.

According to Florence, Edge is the foremost authority on all foods Southern. “John T. is the voice of contemporary Southern food,” Florence said while taking a break from taping. “I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time, and I wanted to get his point of view, especially since he’s been all over searching for the best fried chicken.” Edge conducted his search for the country’s best bird while writing his third book, Fried Chicken: An American Story. The first of a four-part series on iconic American foods, the book will be released by Putnam in the fall of 2004.

Florence, who travels the world in search of the “ultimate” recipes featured on his show, chose a fried chicken recipe Edge obtained from John Fleer, chef at Tennessee’s Blackberry Farm Hotel. The recipe involves brining pieces of dark meat in a sweet-tea mixture for 48 hours before battering them and carefully placing them in a cauldron of hot oil. The result: “The most beautiful chicken I’ve ever seen,” Florence said.

But it was not just Edge’s knowledge of great fried chicken recipes that earned him an appearance on Florence’s program. Edge’s dedication to preserving Southern food traditions also drew attention from Florence, who grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. “I really loved John T.’s book Southern Belly.” Florence said. Published in 2000 by Hill Street, Edge describes the book, published in 2000 by Hill Street, as a “mosaic-like portrait of Southern food told through profiles of people and places.”

Edge’s writing is just one avenue through which he works to keep Southern food traditions alive, though. As director of SFA, Edge has the responsibility for ensuring those traditions don’t die. “Traditional cooking techniques are getting sucked up by corporations catering to people too busy to cook,” Florence said. “It’s up to people who care to protect and preserve the art of Southern cooking. John T.’s work with SFA is like Ken Burns’s efforts to preserve the tradition of baseball through his documentaries, or Steven Spielberg’s efforts to remember the Holocaust through his movies. ”

“ Tyler was looking to explore the South by way of fried chicken,” Edge said. “For him to come to me, to come to SFA, looking for credible fried chicken gives SFA a great deal of credibility in return.”

The episode of Tyler’s Ultimate featuring Edge is scheduled to air several times this winter and spring. For the schedule, check the Web
www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_tu/episode/0,1976,FOOD_10228_30601,00.html

Jennifer Southall