A Sunday dinner of chicken fried in barbecue drippings? Yes, please.

It’s Sunday, and I’m in love.

Craggly skin intertwined with the memory of barbecue smoke gives way to steaming hot, tender meat. Four pieces, piled atop one another, hide a scoop of red-skin potato salad flecked with bacon. Pickled cucumbers, red onions, carrots and cauliflower counteract the richness of this Sunday dinner. All you need now is a tall glass of crisp, cold Kölsch.

Brimstone PNW quietly began slinging a limited number of these fried chicken platters in February. Within six short weeks, the Gig Harbor restaurant has attracted a handful of regulars who have heard the word of this bird.

The secret? There are many, but perhaps most important is a fry in 100 percent barbecue fat, rendered from the drippings of meat in Brimstone’s Alto Shaam smokers.

“That’s the main driver for flavor there,” said chef Will Rieck. “It’s just that smoked fat. It has something to it.”

Trained at the Robert Reynolds Chef Studio in Portland, Rieck was taught to waste not. As opening chef at Netshed No. 9 — Brimstone’s sister restaurant along with Brix 25, all owned by Thad Lyman and Katie Doherty — he asked his mentor for advice.

“Don’t throw anything away,” he recalled.

Located inside the kitchen, rather than outside due to health department restrictions, the smokers yield gallons upon gallons of drippings, said Rieck. When the restaurant opened in 2018, he resourcefully squirreled away this fat for homemade flour tortillas.

“I was taking a firm stand against Wonder Bread,” he said. Customers frequently request white bread with their barbecue, but “that seems sort of standard.”

Brimstone is a barbecue restaurant, but it also has “a Southern fix,” explained Doherty, a Gig Harbor native who, with Lyman, spent time at restaurants in the Bay Area and Napa Valley. (They bought Brix, originally in the Brimstone location at 7707 Pioneer Way, 13 years ago; that upscale restaurant moved to its waterfront home in 2018. ) It’s also kind of Texas, with influence from Mexican, Thai and Pacific Rim flavors, according to Rieck.

In short, he said, “We have a smoker and I will put anything in there.”

The fried chicken made it to the menu after months of tinkering, in part, “because fried chicken is delicious” — and because of the pandemic.

“The whole COVID situation slowing everything down a lot,” said Rieck, “it makes you think more about what you could do. I like having adversity to work against. I like when it’s busy and slammed and there’s a struggle that you have to overcome.”

They considered prime rib night, for instance, but customers were more frequently ordering smoked chicken with their barbecue plates. Fried chicken is comfort food, and comfort food rules pandemic dining.

Rieck and his team begin the Brimstone fried chicken on Saturdays, brining the meat overnight with plenty of salt and herbs. They transfer it to buttermilk on Sunday morning, where it rests for several hours, tenderizing both the meat and the skin. Then, to order, comes the salt-free dredging — chili powders, cornstarch and two types of flour to maintain an even crisp. After about 15 minutes, the pieces head to a stovetop Le Creuset filled with that smoked fat.

The lack of a deep-fryer is another key difference of Brimstone’s fried chicken.

Rieck prefers the stovetop fry because “it makes you pay attention to what you’re doing,” he said. “You have to judge the temperature of the oil. If everything’s just set-it-and-forget-it, you might as well be microwaving it.”

With a final sprinkle of Maldon sea salt, the chicken lands on its aluminum tray, with that pickle pile and smoky tater salad.

Each bite is as hot as the next, even if you grow distracted by an extra order of Million Dollar Cornbread, moistened with coconut milk instead of butter or other dairy.

Along with a Nashville-style hot version (“not for the faint of heart,” says Rieck), it’s available only in-house but not listed on the menu; inquire with your server, who will graciously explain. This Sunday dinner should start early, though, as the kitchen preps a limited number each week. It is not yet offered at brunch, which Brimstone also recently launched.

Fortunately, Rieck has room for another Creuset.

BRIMSTONE PNW

▪ 7707 Pioneer Way, Gig Harbor, 253-858-2709, bbqbrimstone.com

▪ Crazy Crispy Fry Bird, $17, in-house Sunday dinner only (covered and heated front and back patio seating available)

This story was originally published March 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM.