Saturday, September 25, 2010

Baked fried chicken

I usually like pan frying chicken but it just got hot in LA again.. It's going to be over 100 degrees next week! I guess it's a late Indian summer but god... I want fall to come!! Not that LA has fall.. =p
Anyways, I still had these chicken legs in the freezer and wanted to make fried chicken. But frying in this hot weather is so not fun...

I found baked fried chicken recipe on shape.com but changed a bit and I liked it!
Oh one thing to note is though that you might want to get smaller pieces of chicken.. these thighs were on sale so I bought them without thinking much about it and quickly realized that they are way too big and it takes way too long to fully cook these..

Amount of ingredients were for 4 big thighs, so if you are going with smaller pieces, this amount should work w/ ~6 pieces or so. You can use boneless and skinless if you want to cut some calories too.  I used as it is but I'm thinking of trying with boneless and skinless ones next time

Here are the ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk
6 pieces of chicken thighs
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp italian seasoning
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 cup panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
1 1/2 cups corn flakes

For buttermilk, I use cultured buttermilk powder.. When I buy buttermilk in a carton, I never use it up and end up throwing it away since I rarely use it unless a recipe calls for it... AND it smells sour to start with so sometimes I just can't tell whether it's bad or not.. haha..

This is the buttermilk I use:
Put 1 cup of buttermilk and chicken thighs in a ziploc bag and make sure each thigh is coated! Refrigerate at least 30 minutes, but preferrably overnight.  I just found this recipe today, so I refrigerated about 1 hour but I will probably refrigerate overnight next time..

Meanwhile, put salt, pepper, italian seasoning, poultry seasoning, cayenne pepper and corn flake in food processor.  Pulse until "coarsely" ground. I really didn't pay attention to that little detail and ended up grinding them too fine.. it turned out okay but I think it would've tasted better if I ground them a bit coarsely.  Put crumbs on a flat dish.
It has a bit kick to it. If you don't like spicy food, reduce cayenne pepper to 1/4 tsp. If you want it to be spicier, you can put a bit more. 
When you are ready to make it, preheat oven to 350 F.
Coat both sides of chicken with seasoned crumbs.  I packed on crumbs with hands just to make sure it gets lot of crumbs!
Line the pan with aluminum foil and put chicken thighs on it.
I baked them in a convection oven. And that little room is for potato side dish I made. Depending on your oven power, it might be a bit different, but for small pieces, they should be done in 30 minutes or so.  Just check the inside of one of thighs after 30 minutes and see whether you need to bake them longer.  If you need to bake longer and you think potatoes will burn, cover potatoes with aluminum foil.

Here's a simple recipe for potato side dish:
1 large potato, chopped to biting sizes
1/2 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp rosemary
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Cover chopped potatoes with the rest of the ingredients.

You can bake these together and they will be done at the same time!

My husband got home a bit later than expected so I kinda rushed to finish baking these and ate them right away since we were both hungry... THEN I realized that I forgot to take pictures.. =(
I will post more pictures next time I make it again!

This is a quick fix that can satisfy your cravings for fried chickens without feeling guilty!!

Enjoy!!

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