the menu next subtopic frying leaving the top ajar

Why talk about covering a fryer?

To most gourmet cooks, this is a kind of sin.

For country cooks, it was useful, if not also, for some of them, necessary.

I am talking about leaving the top of the skillet 'ajar'.

You can fry at a lower termperature, longer, which is necessary for things like chicken pieces which are rather thick sometimes, and which have to be fully cooked. 

The top ajar also lets off steam, so you aren't actually steaming, but sauteeing in a certain style, and cooking at a higher temperature throughout the skillet interior than just frying on the bottom only, for fully cooked fried food without deep frying.

You can also use less of the high quality and expensive oil I use; it doesn't get burned, and all the oil you do use you can convert to either pan gravy, juice, or soup.  

Another good use for excess oil is to flavor greens. My family never did this as I recall, but I am sure plenty of good cooks, not just southern ones, do. My family bought a cube of pork fat back specifically for simmering in turnip greens. 

A lot of people who fry, or deep fry, just throw the big lot of bad oil they used out. I am allergic to peanuts and soy, so I don't use those anyway. Canola is another bad oil.

Using this method, for chicken, of course you have to watch it periodically, and you have to turn it half way through, at least. It takes like 20 25 minutes, something like that, at least. You have to know how to check chicken for doneness to even do this style of frying.....

A word of caution: if you do try to make hush puppies with this same oil, it probably will then get too overcooked for making good gravy or juice or anything.  Just a thought. 

My own preference is to skip the hush puppies, use the sauteed onion for gravy, and add white wine and Provencal seasonings for the gravy after thickening the oil with flour. This was not southern cooking as far as I know, but that is how I have done it.

To do something worthwhile with this gravy, you need something like mashed root vegetables, biscuits, or both. You can use the excess gravy to thicken soup.