Indiana Fried Chicken

I’ve joked that southeastern Indiana fried chicken, which can be so peppery it’s almost au poivre, is the Midwest’s answer to Nashville’s famous hot chicken—a fiery thrill for people who think black pepper is spicy.

But the Hoosier tradition is nothing to laugh at. Southeastern Indiana—where Colonel Sanders was born and mostly raised, before moving to Kentucky as an adult—is one of the best places in America to eat fried chicken.

The chicken at Wagner’s Village Inn in Oldenburg has earned a James Beard America’s Classic Award and has been featured in the New York Times. Cut into an economical twelve pieces, including the back, and skillet-fried in lard, it’s especially peppery and tender.

After I moved back to my hometown of Cincinnati in 2019, I became a regular at Wagner’s, just across the Indiana border. During the pandemic, once we were allowed to cross state lines again, I began to treat the hour-and-a-half round-trip like a mini-vacation—an excuse to get out of the house (and the state) that ended with a takeout fried chicken feast, if I didn’t fill up on drumsticks on the way home.

You can order the chicken at Wagner’s à la carte, but the menu highlights the chicken dinner, which comes with mashed potatoes, green beans, coleslaw, dinner rolls, and real-deal skillet gravy, and that’s the only way I’ve ever done it. The fixings add to the feeling that a meal at (or from) Wagner’s is a special occasion.

Last year, Cincinnati magazine asked me to write an article about southeastern Indiana fried chicken, which gave me an excuse to visit some of the region’s other fried chicken institutions. All were worth trying, but I ended up agreeing with the Indiana gas station cashier who rolled his eyes when I asked where I should go—besides Wagner’s. “Wagner’s is the fried chicken place around here,” he said. “That’s where I would go, every time.” To my knowledge, it’s the only southeastern Indiana fried chicken spot that still uses lard and cast iron, while others have moved on to canola oil and deep fryers. No wonder it stands out.

The first time I stopped by Wagner’s, then-owner Ginger Saccomando (who has since passed the restaurant on to her son, Dan) encouraged me to stick my head in the kitchen. “Call ahead next time, and we’ll show you the whole process,” she said.

So, I did. Earlier this year, I spent an hour with manager Patricia Caldwell and cook Nolan Lecher, watching Nolan cook while peppering the two Wagner’s veterans with questions about their famous fried chicken. As it turns out, I could describe the whole process in a paragraph if I had to. “We try to keep it simple,” Nolan says. “That’s what works for us.” 

The Wagner’s Way

The Chicken

The process starts with small (roughly three-pound) birds from O’Mara Foods in Greensburg, which supplies most of the area’s fried chicken restaurants. Small birds cook more quickly and evenly. O’Mara breaks them down into parts, including the back pieces, which are used in some regional fried chicken traditions to make more from the bird.

The Seasonings

First, the cooks at Wagner’s toss the chicken with salt and coarse-ground black pepper. Until recently, they didn’t measure either one. After the Beard win and the resulting surge in business, they standardized the process with measuring cups—a 3D-printed scoop and what appeared to be the lid from some kind of plastic container, respectively. The seasoned chicken can sit for up to 30 minutes, but it doesn’t have to. “That isn’t a brine or anything,” Nolan says. “It’s just helpful to get ahead of the crowds on busy days.”

Their pepper is an 18-mesh grind from a foodservice supplier. You should be able to find a similar product at your local supermarket. (I used McCormick’s coarse ground pepper.) Yes, I always, always freshly grind my own pepper… except when I’m making this fried chicken, because the size and consistency of the grind is important, if you want a faithful imitation of Wagner’s.

They mix the seasoning into the chicken, then add the chicken to a tray of unseasoned flour and toss to coat it thoroughly.

The Fat for Frying and the Frying Method

Meanwhile, they heat lard—the pure, non-hydrogenated stuff—in 14-inch cast-iron skillets that date back to the restaurant’s 1968 opening. They don’t want the lard to be hot when they add the chicken, just fully rendered, which means it’s lukewarm. If you’ve ever fried chicken (or anything) before, you know how unusual that is. Starting the chicken at a lower temperature means that it absorbs more oil as it cooks, creating a confit effect during the buildup to a high-heat fry.

They lift the chicken out of the flour, shake off the excess, crowd it into the skillets (two birds per pan), and crank up the heat—as high as it goes. As the fat heats, the chicken begins to sizzle. They let the pieces cook, nestled against each other and mostly submerged, for about half an hour, or until the bottoms begins to brown. They flip and cook for another 15 or 20 minutes.

Finally, they remove the chicken to a rack, where it can sit for up to half an hour. (They no longer finish it with the splash of water included in the Times’ Wagner’s-inspired recipe. “I think that was just for show,” Nolan says.)

The Gravy

They pour the lard through cheesecloth before reusing it, and they collect the “crumbs,” or drippings, from the bottom of the skillet to make a gravy—typically just a slurry of “crumbs” and water, thickened with a little flour, if necessary. All the seasoning in gravy comes from the crumbs.

Recreating Wagner’s Chicken at Home

Simple, right? But when I tried to recreate Wagner’s chicken at home, it didn’t work. I ruined skillet after skillet of chicken, first overcooking it and then undercooking it as I tried to find the right combination of time and temperature. Finally, I had to acknowledge that the chicken in my 12-inch skillet at home was behaving differently than the chicken in the 14-inch skillets on the more efficient restaurant-grade range at Wagner’s, no matter what I tried.

After dozens of tests, I ended up at something closer to standard fried chicken procedure, frying at 300-325℉ for just 15 to 20 minutes total. (I used a skillet in tribute to Wagner’s and generations of fried chicken cooks, but you can use a large Dutch oven for a similar result without the splattery mess.) That isn’t exactly the way they do it at Wagner’s, as detailed above, but in my home kitchen, it produced the most similar result.

I also replaced the water in the gravy with chicken stock, standardized that recipe with a roux for a more predictable and consistent texture, and added dashes of soy sauce and apple cider vinegar for extra flavor. (If you want a plainer gravy, like the one at Wagner’s, you can easily strip all that out.)

Otherwise, I chose tradition, including the lard, which is essential to the golden color, deep, savory flavor, and balance of juicy meat and crackling crust that separates Wagner’s from other restaurants.

Embrace that animal fat—don’t you dare substitute canola!—and what seems like way too much black pepper (until you bite into a drumstick), and you’ll end up with something a lot like the fried chicken that’s brought the Times, the Beards, and me, repeatedly, to a small town in southeastern Indiana.

December 2024