Cook Along: Volume Two - Chicken Fingers and Dipping Sauce

Tonight marks the second appearance of our Cook Along feature.  A brief recap of the rules, we both cook an agreed upon recipe, on the same night, exactly as it's written.  No changing the recipe, no discussing it until after the cook along is done, and NO LEMON BARS!

Tonight is actually a two-fer, Easy Chicken Tenders from Pioneer Woman, and Chicken Finger Dipping Sauce.   The ingredients are all basic pantry staples, which is always nice.  No Glamour Shots of the ingredients tonight, as neither one of us remembered to take a picture, so you'll have to imagine what raw chicken and flour looks like for yourself.

Now, on to the reviews.

Take One:

Okay, confession time.  I picked tonight's recipe because when Andrew and I lived in Baton Rouge, one of our favorite restaurants was Raising Cane's.  They only serve chicken fingers, and they give you this fabulous dipping sauce that is unlike anything else I've ever had.  So when I found the recipe online to make the sauce, I knew I had to try it.  As was mentioned above, the recipe is pretty simple, all items I had on hand.

I used boneless chicken breasts I already had in the freezer, just cut into strips.  I actually forgot to take them out of the freezer until like ten minutes before I wanted to start dinner, but luckily, I'd read this article the other day about how you can safely defrost things in hot water without risking food born illness, so I tried it and it worked like a charm.

Since Pioneer Woman says to just use whatever you have on hand to season the flour, and because I NEVER use season salt, I used chile powder, salt, white pepper, oregano and garlic powder.  The end result was nicely seasoned, and I'm glad I didn't buy season salt specially for this recipe.

I had a little trouble getting the right consistency when I added the milk to the flour, but I ended up mushing it between my fingers like if I were making pastry dough,and it came out pretty well.  The final coating was a good thickness, and there were plenty of little crunchy bits.  I'm glad to have that technique in my repertoire for future. 

I ended up with way more chicken fingers than I needed to serve two adults and one toddler who barely eats meat anyway, so I took Pioneer Woman's suggestion and flash froze half of them.  I'll report back later how that works out.

So, I have to tell you my deep, dark kitchen secret.  Ready?  Come closer. . . . *whispers* I'm afraid of frying things in oil of any depth.

Yeah. I know.  I consider myself a better than average home cook.  I'm not intimidated by much in the kitchen.  I'll try anything once, custard, souffle, candy making, whatever.  But anytime a recipe requires more than the barest puddle of oil in the bottom of a skillet, I start to get nervous.  I have a splatter screen, and I have a fire extinguisher, but I have to tell you that in the fifteen minutes it took me to cook the chicken I'm pretty sure my blood pressure went up at least 20 points.

But we got through it, and they turned out nicely golden brown and crispy.  The dipping sauce was pretty much spot on like Raising Cane's, and went nicely with a side of mashed potatoes and coleslaw.  Andrew's only critique was that they were "too crispy", but I'm not sure how to respond to that, so, oh well.

My final verdict?  Honestly, pretty good.  Easy recipe, good finished product, but at the end of the day, a lot of prep work and dirty dishes.  I hate to say this, but next time I want chicken fingers (once I've cooked the ones in the freezer)  I'm more inclined to just pick up a five pack of chicken selects at McDonald's.  GASP!  Yeah, I know.  But I just don't want chicken fingers that often, and I really like those, especially since they don't come with a side of dirty dishes.

So, if you're set on making chicken fingers, this is a great way to go.  If you're looking for an easy week night meal, I might just keep looking.

AH

Take Two:

For these chicken strips, I bought chicken breasts that were already cut into tenders (why take the extra step of cutting chicken breasts into strips if someone’s already done it for me, right?).  The recipe calls for Lawry’s seasoning salt, which I didn’t have already in my spice cabinet, but I actually had a random coupon for it, so I got that, too.

I started off dinner by getting my side dishes going, since they were going to take longer than the chicken strips.  We had roasted asparagus with garlic (yes, again, but that’s a favorite in our house, and my mother-in-law bought me some asparagus and garlic at our local farmer’s market last Saturday and I needed to use them up) and roasted red potatoes with French onion dip seasoning (another favorite).  Once those were in the oven, I got to work on my chicken strips.

The first thing I noticed was that when I poured the buttermilk into the flour/Lawry’s mixture, it didn’t ball up into nice little clumps like the recipe suggested it would.  It clumped up into big goobies that didn’t really evenly cover the chicken tenders.  I ended up with kind of a gluey mess, but I made it work.  The next thing was that it took much longer for my chicken strips to cook than just the minute and a half per side that was listed in the recipe.  The third group of chicken strips turned out really nice and crispy and definitely were the best ones (the first group wasn’t bad, but it since those were the first ones, they were really more like practice).

Positives: Once I got the hang of frying the chicken, it turned out really crispy and good.  The dipping sauce was really tangy on its own, but it was absolutely perfect with the finished chicken strips.  They were definitely better than frozen, store-bought chicken strips, and the Lawry’s added a nice kick of flavor to the batter.  My asparagus and potatoes were also delicious (but then again, they rarely fail me).  Josh really liked this dish, and he really, really (REALLY) liked the dipping sauce.

Negatives: Honestly, as good as this recipe is, it isn’t something that I plan on making on a regular basis.  Ignoring the fact that I burned my finger pretty badly on the pan that I was using to fry in, my kitchen now smells like a grocery store deli.  Now, I spent a summer working in a grocery store deli, and it was my Least Favorite Job EVER.  To this day (and it’s been 10 years since that summer), when I walk into a grocery store, I can tell if their deli needs to change the oil in their deep fryers, and it makes me nauseous and I usually leave (seriously).  The fact that my kitchen now smells like this is really gross and I’ve got like three candles burning and several windows open to try to get the smell out.  Also, there were a LOT of dirty dishes involved in this, which isn’t my idea of a good time, and overall, this took way longer than I thought it would.

Even though I’m not super excited about the scent that the chicken strips left in my house, I’m really glad that we decided to do this recipe.  I’ve never actually fried anything before, so I’m glad that I tried it.

Here’s a look at my finished product.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go run more cold water on my burned finger.

A.V.



Post Script:  The Chicken Fingers that went in The Freezer

The chicken fingers have been languishing in my freezer since this cook along, and I pulled them out tonight as a last minute dinner option when I knew I needed something that everybody would eat for dinner tonight, with out complaint.


They were thawed to refrigerator temp in about 90 minutes, and went straight into the pan from there.  They were slightly drier tonight, but we preferred their texture this time around.  I'd say they were as good or better than the first night.  Unfortunately, Despite fully half the prep work being done, I still have an awful lot of dirty dishes.  And hot cooking oil to deal with.  Well, shit.   I probably won't be repeating this in future.


AH