Crispy-coated Chicken

I love fried chicken. There I said it. In it's ideal incarnation, it's crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, flavourful and spicy and just plain delicious, both hot and cold. What if you could have it be all those things...and healthy too?

There are lots of good reasons to avoid deep-frying, or shallow-frying for that matter. The biggie of course is health; that's a lot of extra fat no one really needs. There are other reasons too; it's messy, heating that much oil is hazardous, over time it coats your kitchen with a gross oil-haze that is difficult to clean, buying that much fresh oil is expensive but re-using old oil is disgusting...so yeah a pretty good argument can be made against it. The one thing in favour is the way it cooks food when done right - it seals in the flavour and moisture while creating a crisp outer shell. This chicken is all that and more - it's low-fat! Ahhhh I can hear my unclogged arteries thanking me, and my tastebuds taking up the chorus!

Crispy-coated chicken

As this recipe is more about technique than a perfect balance of ingredients, I am going to just approximate amounts, and you can "wing it" when it comes to creating your own blend, haha.

I like to use boneless skinless chicken thighs, they have great flavour and stay moist much longer than breast meat, which is important if you want a really crisp outer layer. They are richer in iron and other nutrients, and not significantly higher in fat, despite the bad rap they get.

Coat chicken peices first in an egg white beaten together with some dijon mustard. Then coat in crumbs; I use a mixture of Nature's Path Mesa Sunrise cereal crushed in the blender, a spoon of flour, season salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, chili powder and garlic powder. I like it heavy on the pepper.

Spray your baking sheet with cooking spray before laying the chicken on it. Then spray the tops of the coated chicken peices.

Bake at 400F until the peices are cooked through, browned and crispy. How long this takes depends on the size of your peices; usually from 25-35 minutes.

You will love this chicken. Anyone you feed it to will love you for it. And, most importantly, you will love me for giving you the idea.

Yay chicken!

Nutritional info: well it totally depends on the size of the thighs...more generous-figured chickens run about 100g per thigh (raw), while the skinny-minnies can be around 50g. So counting for 200g of raw chicken thigh meat, or two gorgeously large thighs per portion, the values are: 298cals, 9g of fat, 43g protein, 7.8g carbs, 1g fibre, 600g sodium.