Perfect Oven Fried Chicken

Fried chicken is a good thing but here is a way to do it that is healthier and fool proof. I almost never did it, partly because the chicken sometimes wouldn't cook all the way through leaving it kind of raw in the middle. After reading through some recipes I found a solution that makes oven fried chicken super easy.

The trick is to boil the chicken in low-fat or fat-free milk (or even lactose free milk), leaving it moist and completely cooked through before you bread and oven fry it. If you are lactose intolerant, it's still possible to eat dairy foods, the key is to learn what works best for you.

The end result is delicious, soft and moist on the inside and perfectly crisp on the outside.

We had my mother-in-law and two sister-in-laws and kids over for Sunday dinner so this is kind of a big recipe but feel free to adjust accordingly.

We served it with oven potatoes and large salad.

Perfect Oven Fried Chicken
Feeds about 6-8 people

4lbs chicken drum sticks with the skin on (about 16-20 drumsticks)
3-4 cups milk (low-fat, fat-free, or lactose free)

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon seasoned salt (or garlic or onion salt or some combination of the two)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley (you can substitute dry herbs but will only use only 2 teaspoons of dried herbs)
2 tablespoons finely chopped oregano
2 tablespoons thyme

2 eggs
1/4 cup water

1 cup bread crumbs
1/3 cup parmesan cheese

cooking spray

1. Put chicken and milk is a large pot and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the chicken is fully cooked.
2. Remove chicken is strainer and allow to fully dry.
3. Mix together the flour, salts, pepper, and fresh herbs. (Feel free to substitute or play with different herb combinations. These just happen to be the herbs that are growing on our back porch these days.)
5. In a separate bowl or shallow dish, mix together the two eggs and water.
6. In a third bowl, mix the bread crumbs together with the Parmesan cheese.
7. Pass each chicken drum stick in the flour mixture, then the eggs mixture, and then the bread crumb mixture.This breads the chicken and makes the nice crispy outside layer.
8. Spray the outside of the chicken with cooking spray, place on a baking sheet and bake until crispy, about 30 minutes rotating chicken after 15 minutes.

This post was written while participating in my partnership with the National Dairy Council, and as always my opinions are my own.

Crock Pot Shoyu Chicken Recipe

Serves 6-8
(Printable Version)

3 lbs chicken (thighs and drumsticks)
1 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
6 cloves garlic 
3-4 inches of ginger (peeled)
2 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons corn starch diluted in 1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon honey
cilantro for garnish

Mix the soy sauce and brown sugar in a medium bowl. Using a food processer chop the garlic and ginger together. Add the chopped garlic and ginger to the soy sauce and brown sugar and mix well. Rub the soy sauce, sugar, garlic,ginger mixture on the chicken pieces and place the chicken in a large crock pot. Pour the chicken broth and the diluted corn starch on top of the chicken. Drizzle with honey. Cook for 6 hours on high. Use chopped cilantro for garnish and serve with rice.

Sundays are my crock pot days. I know, it's totally Mormon of me. It is awfully nice having dinner ready when we come back from church and I love the smell of warm food, specially shoyu chicken, when we walk in the door.

As with most meats cooked in the crock pot shoyu chicken becomes crazy moist the longer it's in there practically falling off the bones when it's done. My kids are total carnivores and meat that's been cooked in the crock pot is their favorite. It's so easy for them to just remove pieces themselves without having us to cut up their meat for them. They are both at that point where feeling independent is a big deal. 

Maria's favorite way to eat shoyu chicken is wrapped in roasted Korean seaweed (also known as Maria and mom crack at our house) with rice and broccoli. 

 

She makes the cutest little rolls and the biggest mess. I don't complain because if she's chowing down on chicken, brown rice, seaweed, and brocoli I should just be grateful and put up with rice getting stuck under my feet.

Do you have a favorite crock pot recipe?

Butterflied Chicken with Lemon and Basil

No matter how much I try to improvise or be creative, I always go back to whole chickens for an easy family dinner. In my life the definition of easy is completely correlated to how much prep time a meal takes. Making a whole chicken involves little prep time. It takes a while to bake but I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about how much actual time I physically have to be in the kitchen, because the more time I am inside the kitchen the more time baby Maria is outside of the kitchen trying to open up the baby gate that separates her from the pot of boiling water on the stove, or the chicken that's inside the hot oven.

One of these days, if I give her enough time, that baby gate will swing open and Maria will demand total domination of the kitchen.

So I have to work fast.

Lately I've been using a lot of recipes from the new cook book Deliciously Organic by Carrie Vitt. I'm surprised by how little prep time her recipes involve. Carrie is a mom, so I guess that explains some (or all) of why that is. I met Carrie at Food Blogger Camp back in January and I liked her immediately. Even though she's a very strong advocate and a real life example of the benefits of using organic and unprocessed ingredients in her cooking, she is not preachy at all. At least not in the sense where you feel inadequate if you're not buying organic everything.

Organic everything is expensive, and Carrie understands that. Her philosophy is that every little bit helps. That's what I do, I buy what I can. Chicken, for example, I only buy organic. It's an expense I'm willing to fork out for my own mental sanity. I hate thinking about excessive hormones in meat. Yuck!

A couple weeks ago I made a variation of Carrie's butterflied chicken.
Mine had a lemony-basil kick to it.