KFC Chicken – Disco Style

Discs, disco, discada, cowboy woks

While cooking on a plow disc may sound unusual, it’s nothing new. Discada cooking in the Southwest dates back more than a century, with much of the lore reaching back to the construction of the railroads in the late 1800s.

“A majority of the railroad workers coming through New Mexico and Texas were Chinese. When they would take their lunches, they’d use a wok. We didn’t have the same woks they had, but we had these plows. We filled in the disc holes and turned them into cookers.”

https://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-fo-co-fire-disc-outdoor-cooking-recipes-20180901-story.html

The idea of a plough disc being used as a cooker (wok style) goes back over a century it seems. It would make sense…plug the axle hole, clean it up and season it and the size, shape and material are perfect to place on an open fire to cook. Applications are quite broad – it can perform as a griddle, a skillet, a paella pan, frying pan or a wok, and for the version I have, the setup works with my Kamado Big Joe or standalone over an open fire by screwing on three steel legs that came with it. All that said, this is a very simple concept – no widgetry in this beast…just 25lbs and 24 inch diameter of 1/4 inch thick steel disc. Welded on handles, and that’s really it. Not a boy’s toy – this is a man’s tool ! (For those “city slicker” types, there are gas burning options too 🙂 !)

Wherever this style of cooking came from, it’s now popular in Northern Mexico and gaining popularity across the border. The Spanish name for the disc is “disco”, and one of the main dishes cooked on this is a “discada” (“mince and onions” with whatever else is in the fridge, essentially), hence the term “discada cooking”. The southern states cowboys coined their own term of “cowboy wok”. This is likely one of those things that will be impossible to find back in the UK when we go home – one of the other benefits of our little work assignment here in the USA !

KFC Chicken

I should probably have played it a little safer and gone with a traditional discada as the first cook, but I had a plan for fried chicken anyway, and so two proverbial birds were to be killed with one stone. I found this recipe online (of course) but did not go the whole way with the MSG and the pressure-fryer. One other change was that I used vegetable oil and not lard or Crisco.

I also went light on the oil in the disco for obvious reasons of cooking oil, frying and naked flames. Although there was some risk (which kept me a little on-edge) the chances of sparks or flare ups making it from the KJ firebox into the oil were slim – I kept the oil level down, and the air gap around the disc was pretty narrow.

The KJ did a pretty good job of keeping the oil to 350F for most of the cook, but in fairness this is where a gas burner probably would help. Charcoal fires can be controlled of course, but there’s an appreciable time lag between shutting vents and actually experiencing a change, but we just about made it – preserving the essential balance of “golden, crispy on the outside” and “juicy, cooked on the inside”. The recipe’s certainly a keeper, maybe with the addition of MSG next time (which is disturbingly easy to get here in USA supermarkets !), and maybe lard makes a difference here too.