“Oven-fried” Chicken Fingers
I love chicken fingers, and I have for as long as I can remember. They are classic picky kid food (and believe it or not, I was a very picky eater as a kid) and aside from being delicious, they’re comfort food for me. So while they’re not something I eat every week, there are probably more fingers in my diet than strictly speaking there ought to be.
I don’t have a deep fryer, and frying at home is an activity that I generally try to avoid for reasons of both health and safety. But I’ve been meaning to try one of these “oven-fried” recipes that I see all over the place for a while now. So last week I dipped some chicken breast strips in egg and bread crumbs and tossed them in the oven. I was expecting the result to be pretty underwhelming, but instead I was blown away. The fingers were crispy, juicy, and delicious, and this recipe has achieved “staple” status in my kitchen after just one try. It’s that good.
Sometimes I can tell a dish is going to be great while I’m cooking it. This was definitely not one of those.
I was afraid that the chicken would be dry and tasteless and that the crust would be soggy and bland. When the fingers were in the oven, the crust didn’t seem to be browning as much as it should, and I didn’t have high hopes for the final result. But in the end the chicken was amazing. I won’t say that it tasted just like fried fingers – that would be madness – but I might venture that they were just as good. They didn’t taste like fryer oil, but they were just as crispy on the outside and just as juicy on the inside.
The recipe is a cinch:
1. Take boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Trim off any particularly fatty or gristly-looking bits. Cover in saran wrap and pound the meat out with a meat tenderizer. If you don’t have a meat tenderizer – I don’t – improvise. Believe it or not, a regular hammer will do just fine. Cut chicken into strips of roughly equal thickness.
2. In a small bowl, lightly beat two eggs.
3. In a large bowl, season a crust of your choosing. I used panko with oregano and some seasoning salt, but I’d urge you to experiment. (As stated above, this is my first experiment with this recipe, so I make no guarantees about other kinds of bread crumbs. It may be that panko is the right choice here.)
4. Dip chicken strips in the egg mix and then in the bread crumbs, and then place them on a foil-covered baking sheet.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, flipping halfway through.
6. Eat, recalling childhood memories if desired.
Crushed up spicy cheez-its (or plain cheez-its with creole seasoning of your choice) makes for an excellent crust. Instead of egg, I dip it in buttermilk first, skim off the excess, and then shake it up in a ziploc bag.