A sure way to achieve instant joy, Navé’s fried chicken is the dish that we all need right now

You remember it, right? Your first good piece of fried chicken? You can probably taste it now, perhaps served with salted watermelon on paper plates in grandma’s backyard. Or from a takeout window, you in the back seat of the station wagon, sneaking a drumstick on the way home.

For chefs Justin Flit and Michael Beltran, they’ve got fried chicken memories that sound just like ours, not some fancy chef school story. Flit says he can remember begging his mom down every aisle of Publix for the grocery store’s chicken, which he still upholds as a gold standard. (Who doesn’t, right?)

For Beltran, he thinks of freshman year in college in Virginia, when the Cuban-American kid from Miami discovered Southern food: Brunswick stew, biscuits and apple butter, and the fried chicken made by the mom of a classmate. “That was a whole new world of food that changed me forever,” Beltran recalls.

Both of them, they say, think of fried chicken as the ultimate indulgence, a plate of something special that you just finish, leftovers be damned. It brings you back home, memories of your first crispy wing, tang from the buttermilk marinade, grease on your fingers, those bonus crispy bits of salty batter at the bottom of the bucket.

Which is why they decided a few months ago, when their customers really needed something special in their lives, to start doing a bucket and bubbles takeout special at their restaurant Navé. That first night, they sold out, 50 orders total. It became a regular Friday thing. Then, with the lockdown lifted, they kept the chicken on the menu.

It was a dish that Beltran and Flit had discussed adding to the menu when they decided to team up to open Navé, a place the Miami Herald’s Kendall Hamersly wrote in January “has the rare combination of superlative food, creative craft cocktails, sparkling decor and impeccable service.” Now, in a time when we all still need comfort food, they’ve decided to keep it.

They serve it on a copper platter with two sides, often brown-butter creamed corn and a raw collard green salad with tangy pickled veggies to cut the dish’s richness.

A BITE OF BLISS

If you attempt the recipe on these pages, Flit suggests either asking a butcher to cut up a whole chicken or do it yourself, avoiding the “hacked up” pieces in grocery stores. It’ll also take some time — at least three days of prep. Aside from that planning, it’s not a difficult recipe, Flit says, and it does include two secret weapons in the breading: potato starch for crunch and milk powder to keep the chicken moist.

The end product, Beltran says, is something he devoured the first night Flit made it, eating an entire chicken himself. He says it made him forget for a moment about everything else.

“A good piece of fried chicken is something that can change someone’s whole day,” Beltran says. “It’s kind of a moment we all need now more than ever.”

NAVÉ THREE-DAY FRIED CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

2 whole chickens, cut into 8 pieces

28 ounces of water

6.5 ounces of kosher salt

5 tablespoons of sugar

18 ounces of black peppercorns

7 ounces of ice cubes8 ounces of buttermilk

1 tablespoon of hot sauce

4 cups all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons of potato starch

6 teaspoons of powdered milk

1 teaspoon of smoked paprika

1 teaspoon of black pepper

1. To make brine, bring to a boil for two minutes water, 3.5 ounces of salt, sugar and black peppercorns. Add ice, and when cooled, add chicken, making sure all pieces are submerged. Refrigerate 8 hours, then rinse chicken well under cold water before patting dry.

2. Place chicken in buttermilk and marinate for 2 days.

3. Mix together flour, potato starch, powdered milk, smoked paprika, black pepper and 3 tablespoons of kosher salt.

4. Dredge chicken in breading, making sure no spots are left uncoated. Transfer to a wire rack to allow excess flour to fall off. Allow chicken to air dry for a minimum of 4 hours to ensure the breading and meat will adhere.

5. Heat vegetable oil to a steady 300 degrees in a large pot and fry2 or 3 pieces at a time to make sure temperature stays consistent. Fry chicken for 7-8 minutes, turning once gently.

6. Transfer to a wire rack and season with salt, pepper and smoked paprika.