The best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten was at Gus’s, a ramshackle joint in rural Tennessee. The chicken’s outer coating was a gorgeous chestnut brown, the meat inside was spectacularly juicy, and the flavor had a slight saltiness countered by an aggressive spiciness. As I devoured piece after piece, I was aware that this would go down as one of the greatest eating experiences of my life.

So when I read “Fried Chicken: An American Story” (Putnam, 18.95) by the fine Southern food writer John T. Edge, I was excited to learn that the fried chicken at Blue Smoke in Manhattan is patterned after the recipe at Gus’s. I’d had plenty of experience with Blue Smoke’s barbecue but had never tried their fried chicken. With the memory of Gus’s running through my mind, I hurried down to try a batch.

It was disappointing. Blue Smoke’s fried chicken isn’t bad, mind you – fried chicken is almost never bad, after all – but it isn’t special either. It was diner-level, or maybe Howard Johnson’s-level. Gus’s-level? Not even close.

While the quality of fried chicken may vary, we’re certainly not lacking for quantity, especially here in New York. Plug “fried chicken” into the search engine at yellowpages.com for each of the five boroughs and you’ll come up with more than 400 venues (Brooklyn is the leader, with 116). And that’s not counting all the chain outlets that don’t have “fried chicken” in their name, like Popeye’s, Church’s, and so on.

The problem with these places – aside from the fact that most of them have that godforsaken, “one rung lower than McDonald’s” feel to them – is that they cook their chicken in batches and then let it sit there under a heat lamp, which is no way to treat food with a light, crispy coating. Even in a real restaurant like Blue Smoke, fried chicken seems to lose something on its way from the kitchen to your table. The answer, of course, is to make your own. In fact, unless you’ve made fried chicken yourself (or been to rural Tennessee), you probably don’t realize how good this dish can be. Unfortunately, most people shy away from frying their own chicken, often due to the misguided notion that home frying is inherently messy. But frying is much easier than most folks think. And the results are vastly superior to most commercially available fried chicken.

Mr. Edge’s book – the first in a series of titles devoted to iconic American foods, including apple pie, donuts, and hamburgers – is a good primer. It’s loaded with fascinating information on the various immigrant culinary traditions that have merged with hot oil and poultry to create their own unique strains of American fried chicken. In New York alone, you can find Dominican, Guatamalan, and, of course, African-American renditions of the dish. And Mr. Edge has found many more variations – Serbian, Italian, even Korean – during his travels around the country.

Best of all, there are recipes. In some instances, restaurateurs profiled in the book obligingly provided Mr. Edge with their formulations; in others (such as the case of the Chicago chef who laughed in Mr. Edge’s face when asked to divulge his recipe), Mr. Edge has come up with his own approximations. The result is a rich variety of approaches to the crispy bird.

Having tried many of the recipes, I’ve come to a few conclusions. Let’s examine each element of the dish:

1 The Chicken Smaller is better – look for a chicken that’s three pounds or less, and have it cut into eight pieces. Mr. Edge is partial to free-range and organic, but my standards are simpler: Anything but Perdue. Whatever chicken you get, you can substantially improve its juiciness by brining it for at least four hours in a gallon of water with a cup of dissolved salt.

2 The Coating There are two primary ways to prepare your chicken: battering it or covering it with seasoned flour. Personally, I find battering to be too heavy-handed – go with flour. All-purpose flour is fine, but I prefer self-rising flour, which adds a slightly biscuit-ish texture to the finished coating.

Some folks like to apply the flour directly to the chicken, which is fine. But if you first dip the chicken in an egg/milk mixture (traditionalists favor buttermilk, although I can’t really taste a difference in the finished product), the flour will adhere better and the crust will have a bit more depth.

3 The Seasonings The first things to add to the flour, of course, are salt and pepper. After that, it depends on whether you like your chick enspicy, savory, or whatever. Paprika and cayenne pepper are good, and one of Mr. Edge’s recipes features lemon pepper, which works beautifully. Garlic powder, cumin, Old Bay seasoning, even Chinese five-space powder – basically, if it’s in your spice rack and you like it, try it.

4 The Fat You have two primary choices here, the first of which is shortening. The best option is lard, but only if you can get fresh leaf lard (taken from the hog’s kidney area) from your butcher. As Mr. Edge puts it, “If all you can get is shelf-stable hydrogenated [lard], you might as well go with Crisco.” I would second this, but skip the regular Crisco and go for Crisco’s new Zero Grams Trans Fat shortening, which is surprisingly good for frying.

The other frying medium is oil. Mr. Edge favors peanut oil, but I think corn oil works just as well, plus it’s cheaper and easier to find in large-quantity containers. Whatever oil you use, adding a few tablespoons of bacon fat will add a nice richness to the proceedings. Adding bacon fat is also a good idea when using Crisco.

Some recipes call for just an inch of oil in the pan, others for four times that much. Basically, this comes down to a question of pan-frying (in which the chicken is partially submerged in a shallow amount of oil and must be turned as it cooks) versus deep-frying (more oil, full immersion, no turning). I like the idea of pan-frying, because it’s a more hands-on, involved way of cooking. But after lots of comparisons, I’m convinced there’s no real flavor difference. If you prefer low-maintenance cooking and have enough oil on hand, deep-frying is fine.

5 The Vessel The classic way to fry chicken is in a big cast-iron skillet. Again, this is an appealing idea, and I don’t doubt that an ancient iron pan, seasoned with several decades’ worth of use, probably adds a special something. Failing that, however, an aluminum pan is fine. So is a stockpot, for that matter, especially if you’re deep-frying, and you’ll have less splattering to deal with.

Speaking of which, a splatter guard is a good thing to have handy. The only other specialized tool you’ll need is a candy thermometer.

The chicken will be very hot when it comes out of the pan, so let it sit for a few minutes before digging in. But don’t wait much longer than that – you need to eat it soon, while it’s still at its crispiest and juiciest, to appreciate the difference between commercial and homemade.

That’s not to say the leftovers won’t still taste pretty good the next day, of course.

Finally, there’s the issue that so many people find daunting: cleanup. Wondering what to do with all that used oil? Easy: Just use a funnel to pour it back into the empty container it originally came in (or into a 2-liter soda bottle, or any other disposable container) and then throw it away. If your skillet doesn’t have a spout, or if you’re frying in a large pot, use a ladle or measuring cup to transfer the oil to the funnel. Like every other aspect of making fried chicken, it’s easier than you think.

FRIED CHICKEN ON THE FLY

If you’re hankering for fried chicken and can’t be bothered to cook your own, here are three excellent restaurant options, all in Manhattan:

Charles’ Southern Style Kitchen (2837 Frederick Douglass Blvd., 212-926-4313): North Carolina native Charles Gabriel turns out spectacular chicken at his small, homey restaurant in Washington Heights. Great soul food side dishes, too.

Jacques-Imo’s (366 Columbus Ave., 212-799-0150): Skip the inconsistent Cajun and Creole fare and stick to the world-class fried chicken, which somehow manages to be juicy without being the least bit greasy. Word to the wise: Specify all dark meat.

New Caporal (3772 Broadway 212-862-8986): This unassuming Dominican takeout storefront serves a lip-smackingly spicy bird, thanks to a Cuban-style mojo marinade – it’s my favorite fried chicken in the city. Plus each order comes in a little box adorned with a chicken dressed up as a cowboy!