there’s no shortage of fried chicken joints where i live, but my favorite kind will always be homemade. since the first time we had “corn flakes chicken,” i’ve been searching for new and interesting ways to fry delicious things. after trials with several different cereals (cap’n crunch, no crunchberries, thank you, and frosted mini chex – too sweet), i’ve settled on honey bunches of oats. it’s got the perfect amount of crunch, a good sweetness, and it tastes great cold when you’re looking for something to gobble down at 2 am.
the assembly line: breading and frying chicken can be an extremely messy task, and my one piece of advice is to constantly clean your workstation and keep your hands clean and dry. the worst thing you can do is get globs of egg and flour in the cereal breading. trust me, taking your time here can make a world of difference once you’re ready to start frying.
the key to flouring your chicken is to keep the coating very light. pat off any excess flour so there’s a thin even coating. if the flour layer is too thick, dipping it into the egg will get you clumps of egg-flour glue that will drip right of the chicken, putting you back where you started. keeping both the flour and egg layers thin ensures you get a strong glue to help the coating stick close to the chicken and stay on during the frying process.
can you find the chicken in this picture? here’s the giant tub of cereal i used to bread the chicken. since the flakes are a little large, i dumped a bunch in a tupperware container and crushed it with my bare hands. i suppose you could also quickly pulse it in the food processor or pour some into a ziploc bag and crush it with a rolling pin but i like getting my hands in there. see all those tiny crumbs of cereal goodness? make sure you use them – the goal is to get each piece of chicken completely covered, and those tiny crumbs can fill in the gaps between the giant bunches and oats.
here’s a quick reminder that i’m also making macaroni n’ cheese. did you forget? this will also have breading on it. i can’t wait.
and now back to the chicken, post-fry. there are few sights as beautiful. i almost don’t want to ruin it by, you know, eating it. alas, i must. for blog purposes, you see. to backtrack a bit, i fried up the chicken in vegetable oil, although you can use your fat of choice – if you’re a purist, maybe a tub of crisco is the way to go. for some reason though, crisco just weirds me out.
i mean, just look at this chicken. if you start seeing honey bunches of oats chicken on the menus of fancy restaurants soon, don’t freak out. embrace it.
