Food Dictionary, part 5

Drench and Dredge: two words that you are likely to hear in kitchens all over the south, especially in Alabama and Louisiana. The processes are universal, but the words are definitely regional. If you ever watched Justin Wilson back in the day, you'd hear him used drench and dredge on almost every episode. The processes of drenching and dredging have to do with coating a food and then frying it. Let's head on over to epicurious.com and found out how they're defined.

Dredge: To lightly coat food to be fried, as with flour, cornmeal or bread crumbs. This coating helps brown the food. Chicken, for example, might be dredged with flour before frying.

Drench: Whoops .... there is no entry in epicurious' food dictionary for this word. That's because drench is more of a colloquialism when used in conjunction with dredge.

If you read my recipe for Pecan-encrusted chicken, you would have seen a version of drench and dredge where I dredged the chicken first in the flour, drenched it in egg, then dredged it in pecans. Now here's a quick look at a simple drench-dredge procedure for making chicken fried steak:

1. Season meat
2. Drench in egg
3. Dredge in flour.