Tuesday, March 5, 2013

fried chicken

I am a cook book girl. I love flipping through the pages {or even hunting online} for a new recipe that fits within my criteria {not a gazillion ingredients, no ingredients where I'll use a tablespoon of something and then have a whole bottle left over, can't take 2 hours to prep/cook, doesn't use cooking utensils I don't own}. In college, a friend of mine would come over once a week and we would make a new recipe together.

All that being said, I'm not a make-something-up kinda girl. The first time I tried it involved chili powder, brown sugar, cubed steak, and a disaster. I was inspired by Paula Dean so I'm just gonna blame her for that one.

BUT after five years of marriage {therefore five years of cooking for the hubs} I've started to "make-up" my own recipes, within reason. Last night, after putting the baby to bed, I had chicken defrosted and leftover mashed potatoes. I normally bake my chicken but it was already 7:45 and I needed something faster. I decided to make fried chicken by myself without a recipe!


Ingredients I used:
boneless, skinless chicken breasts
flour
egg beaters
plain bread crumbs
garlic powder
oregano
paprika
pepper
crisco

I cut my chicken breasts into smaller manageable strips and then set up my dunking stations.

{station 1} flour with some good shakes of all the spices
{station 2} egg beaters
{station 3} bread crumbs with more shakes of all the spices for good measure

After a dip in each, they went into a frying pan full of hot crisco. The first round I had the crisco too hot so I ended up with really crunchy chicken and a kitchen full of smoke. Oops!


The next round I lowered the temp to medium-low {about a 4 on my dial} and they looked much prettier.


I really have no idea how long to cook things so they are done so I constantly cut into meat to check it. Not the proper way I know, but I just can't handle accidental raw meat. After they pass the cut test, onto the paper towels they went!



I steamed some sweet corn, spooned out our leftover mashed potatoes and broccoli, and added the fried chicken to the plate. Viola!


Not exactly food blog beautiful, but it was delicious.

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