Posted on: Wednesday, February 23, 2005
RECIPE DOCTOR
Fried chicken skips the deep-fried oil
By Elaine Magee
Who can resist a name like Double-Dipped Fried Chicken?
The original recipe — from "Food 911" with Tyler Florence — uses buttermilk to help tenderize the chicken meat. We do that here, but use a low-fat buttermilk. And we are still using a seasoned flour mixture.
What we won't be doing is deep-frying the chicken in oil. Instead, we will be adding a controlled amount of a preferred oil (4 teaspoons) to the bottom of a baking dish and adding skinless, boneless chicken pieces. The tops of the chicken strips will be coated with canola cooking spray.
The flour mixture has a nice flavor to it, and the little bit of canola oil we use does the trick to make nicely browned and crispy strips.
It's hard to know exactly how much oil the original recipe should include in its nutrition analysis (since it comes from deep-frying), but if you compare this oven-fried method to a single piece of dipped fried chicken, you appear to save 122 calories and 15 grams of fat per serving.
For comparison, one serving of floured and fried chicken from a whole chicken breast (about 1 1/2 pounds), split into four servings, has 422 calories, 23.5 grams fat, 6.5 grams saturated fat, and 141 milligrams cholesterol (as calculated by the ESHA Food Processor II database).
DOUBLE-DIPPED OVEN-FRIED CHICKEN
Rinse chicken pieces and pat dry with paper towels. Cut each breast into about 3 long strips.
In a medium bowl, combine buttermilk with red pepper sauce and add the chicken strips, turning them to coat well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.
Heat oven to 450 degrees. Coat the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch dish with the canola oil.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, pepper, oregano, garlic, paprika and cayenne. Blend well.
Remove chicken strips from buttermilk with a slotted spoon. Roll each strip first in the flour mixture then back in the buttermilk, then again in the flour.
Place each double-dipped chicken strip into the baking pan. Coat the tops of the strips with canola cooking spray.
Bake 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked throughout. Switch oven to broil and broil chicken strips about 1 minute (watching carefully) to lightly brown the tops. Serve with your favorite condiments.
Makes 4 servings.
• Per serving (if half of the buttermilk and 2/3 of the flour mixture is used up with the chicken): 300 calories, 31 g protein, 26 g carbohydrate, 8 g fat (1.6 g saturated fat, 4 g monounsaturated fat, 2.2 g polyunsaturated fat), 75 mg cholesterol, 1 g fiber, 486 mg sodium. Calories from fat: 24 percent. Omega-3 fatty acids, 0.8 g; omega-6 fatty acids, 1.4 g Weight Watchers points, 6. Elaine Magee's new book "Fry Light, Fry Right" is in bookstores. Reach her through www.recipedoctor.com. Personal responses can't be provided. This column is distributed by Knight Ridder News Service.
