There’s something special about cooking from scratch. In this series, we talk to local restaurants about dishes made from scratch.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we’ve all tried frozen fried chicken in our lifetime.
It’s when we start to know better that we can taste when the chicken is always fresh and every ingredient in the dish is prepared from scratch.
That’s certainly the case at Ellen’s on Front, where general manager Bunnii Buglione raves about chef Jennie Werts’ version of the dish, which includes marinating the chicken in a house-made sweet tea brining liquid overnight and even preparing a hot sauce from scratch.
And forget simply deep frying, these chicken pieces are braised first.
“When you’re deep frying, it takes longer to cook and deep frying pulls the moisture out of the meat,” Buglione said. “Chef essentially braises it for several hours until it is cooked through.”
Breading and frying occurs only after the dish has been ordered. It’s breaded with a seasoned flour, then goes into a wet batter, then back into the dry seasoned flour and into the deep fryer until it is golden brown.
The fried chicken is then drizzled with in-house hot sauce honey butter and sprinkled with Thai basil.
The honey butter is also made from scratch. Werts roasts and blends a mixture of peppers and then melts butter and honey in a little bit of vinegar and blends it all together with the peppers.
Ellen’s on Front is located at 38 Front Street, Greenport
