Me & a pan of hot oil.
It's never been a good idea, but it is slowly becoming more common as I expand my repetoir. Generally speaking, in this house, if the recipe calls for more than a tablespoon or so of oil in the pan, the recipe does not get made. This is not for reasons of health but for reasons of fear - fear of burns, fear of fire, fear of smoke alarms, fear of the greasy spattered mess to clean. But today I once again ventured into the fry arena. This time it was Rachel Ray's chicken tenders. i won, but it was a struggle. The problem again was equipment. To bread the chicken you need a plate of flour, a plate with eggs and a plate of breadcrumbs. 3 plates. and since the breading takes a bit of time for me I need a cooling rack to let them rest while I get 6 of them ready for the skillet. I lack contiguous counter space of suffient size. (say that 3 times fast) So here is my problem. There is no way to be food safe & bread chicken at the same time. You don't want to be spreading raw chicken all over your counters. (not to mention the counters have plates & things on them already) So I used very tiny plates and very very slowly breaded 6 pieces of chicken. They fried up well & then went into the oven to finish cooking. I'm not good with oil due to lack of experience so it got a little to hot & a couple pieces got browner than needed but nothing burned.
The boys wouldn't eat it. It's breaded fried chicken. The one thing in the whole of the vast world of food that the little demons can be counted on to eat and they wouldn't eat it. It is very very frustrating. I don't know that they actually disliked it so much as they just were not in the mood to eat. DS2 had 2 bites of chicken and a few more of spinach salad. DS1 ended up eating maybe 4 bites of chicken & 2 of salad. It had been 3 hours since they last ate, so they should have been hungry, but all they really wanted to do was goof off. Thats been the thing lately, goof off & not eat. I think we give them plenty of time. Really 30 minutes to eat 8 bites of chicken & some spinach salad is plenty. We gave them a 10 minute warning (at the end of the 30 minutes), which was when DS1 actually ate something, and when the time was up the food was gone. Suddenly drama about being SO HUNGRY!!! Oh but not for that chicken. I'm so tired of this.
I wonder if they will eat it on the pizza tomorrow?
1 comment:
Consider using two paper bags, and a plate for the egg wash.
Put the flour (along with any herbs and spices--rumor has it that the Colonel uses 11, but I think he counted both salt and pepper in the total) in one bag and the bread crumbs in the other.
Then dip the chicken pieces one by one into the egg wash. But only do a few at a time, and then place a few pieces into bag with the flour.
Shake. (The bag, not you.)
Put the chicken-licken which by now will be white as a ghost, which just goes to show how scary being tossed around in a strange bag can be, back in the egg wash, and put the rewet pieces in the bread crumb bag.
Shake. (This time if you wish you can just jump up and down while holding the bag and shout, "Here I am holding the d*mn bag again. And if you think I am mad now, just don't eat what I have slaved for hours, if not days, over a blistering hot stove for you to eat!")
Then lay the chicken into the hot oil. Now as a Southerner and a chemist, I want to reassure you that a good vegetable oil is not bad for either you or your family.
So use enough oil to come up to the half way point on the sides of your chicken.
Don't crowd the pan as this cools the oil too much and prevents a crispy crust which is the whole reason for frying it in the first place.
Cook two small batches, or if you happen to own a 100,000 btu flame weeder propane burner, you could probably do it with one batch, but you will have to figure out how to get the burner under the pan and...oh well, just use two batches so that the pieces are not touching.
Drain well. (The chicken. You are probably already drained by now, but at least you did not have to chase the chicken down in the yard, wring its little chicken-neck, scald it, pluck the chicken feathers, flame it with a piece of burning newspaper (this is what Mama did) to get the chicken pin feathers off, the butcher it, which is what my mother had to do in the way back when. She was well drained at the end of the process too, but we had Southern Fried Chicken cooked in LARD (pork fat rules) every Sunday, near 'bout.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, when all is done, just throw the bags of flour and bread crumbs away. Unless you want to save them to threaten DS 1 and DS 2 in case they don't eat, that is.
Walter
P.S. Hint trying to find a paper bag these days may be a major obstacle. Any plastic bag including a plastic zipper bag or even a plastic grocery bag, if clean, will do, though I would avoid pillow cases unless you are truly desperate.
P.P.S. I think the taking the food away is a good idea, when kids don't eat. You can say when they whine, "Boy are you lucky! 'Cause we are going to eat again in five or six hours, so be sure to come back then!" Unless this was supper, which is now called dinner, and you can tell them that they have lucked out once again for it is almost a certainity that we will have breakfast. A time or two of this with no nonsense like snacks, will change the whole system with limits and rules. Twice is usually all it takes.
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