Tasty Tuesday: Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

You have to say the title in your best Gomer Pyle impersonation:

Anyway…when I was in college, I ate lunch at my Grandma’s one weekend, and she had made her fried chicken. I LOVED her fried chicken! I just had to know how she did it. How much grease? What kind of breading? What seasonings? Imagine my shock when she informs me that she doesn’t pan fry or deep fry her chicken…she oven fries it! Recently I was thinking about that conversation and decided to go for it. Of course, my grandmother doesn’t have a recipe for anything, so I mixed, mingled, and played with breading, seasoning, grease, temperature, and time.

Here is what you need to make Claudine’s Oven Fried Chicken:

  

Enough pieces of bone-in chicken to feed your family and/or guests (you can use  boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but the cooking time has to lowered)

Baking mix

Seasoned salt

Pepper

Canola oil

2 eggs, beaten

First, pour enough oil on a baking sheet to just coat the bottom.

 Next, sprinkle chicken liberally with seasoned salt and black pepper.

  

Pour quite a bit of baking mix in a bowl (about two cups?). Place beaten eggs in a bowl. Do a thin coat of baking mix on the pieces of chicken.

 Dip coated chicken in egg.

Now dip the chicken back in the baking mix and coat really well.

Place chicken on baking sheet.

Bake for thirty minutes at 350 degrees. (For boneless, skinless chicken breasts bake for 20 minutes.)

Turn chicken over and bake for another thirty minutes. (Another 20 minutes for BSCB.)

The result is perfectly cooked chicken with a crispy, flavorful crust.

In my happy world, this chicken has less calories and fat, than regular fried chicken. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes me feel better when I have a piece because it’s just so, so good.

Feel free to play with seasonings and breading, plain old salt, pepper, and regular flour would work great.

Named this one in honor of my grandmother who’s one of the best cooks I’ve ever known in the tree house,

Chelli