The best fried chicken ever; plus 3 finger-licking good recipes

Racks.

Marinade or deep fry, there's not one best recipe. But when done right, nothing beats the taste of deep fried chicken.

When Mary Randolph published the first American cookbook in 1824, The Virginia House-Wife, she wrote a recipe for fried chicken with one sentence: “Cut (the chicken) up as for the fricassee, dredge them well with flour, sprinkle them with salt, put them into a good quantity of boiling lard, and fry them a light brown.”