Dr.Jass
Pastor of Muppets
This one surprised me, but I had a boneless chicken breast I needed to use up, and once again I was feeling inventive. I really hate eating chicken on the bone so I rarely buy it that way, so strips it was.
Ingredients:
Boneless chicken breasts, drained (I got about 11-12 strips out of one)
Bread crumbs
Canola oil
Frank's Red Hot (the standard stuff, not the wing sauce)
Store-brand pasta sauce (I again used Shur-Fine meat sauce--I'm getting a ton of mileage out of that $1.65 quart!)
Ranch or bleu-cheese salad dressing, according to preference
That's it. That's all I used. The real effort in wings is making them the right way, which most places do not do.
Prepping the chicken involved cutting into strips about 1/2" thick across the width. The longer strips I cut in half so the longest one was a little over 2". Had I known what I was going to do with this chicken before inspiration struck, I may have marinated it in teriyaki ahead of time. This was literally a last-minute thing. Bread the chicken with the crumbs, making sure to coat evenly and completely.
The sauce is amazingly simple, and the amount I made left only a little so if you're serving a number of people, this is really only enough for one boneless breast:
1/2 cup Frank's Red Hot
1/4 cup pasta sauce
Mix together and simmer on lowest heat in a small saucepan. That's it. I used a 1-quart simply to have reasonable depth to the sauce since I made so little.
OK, take a frying pan and pour in your canola oil, to a depth of 1/4" or a bit more. Put it on medium heat. You want the oil up to temp when the chicken hits it. Drop your strips in, single-layer and with enough room to work. Cover. It won't take them long to fry, but stoves differ so keep an eye on 'em. When the edges of the upper side turn a golden brown, flip them, cover, and cook for a like amount of time. Remove and set on a plate with a paper towel to soak up the grease until you've got all your chicken deep-fried the shallow way. Do not remove the canola from heat. You still need it.
Drop several strips into your Buffalo sauce, still on low heat. Roll them around so they get coated evenly, and allow a few minutes for the sauce to simmer into the breading. When you're satisfied they've simmered enough, return directly to the still-hot canola oil and fry 'em again, obviously turning once; approximately the same cook time as your first round. Remove to a plate, again with a towel, until you've got them all done with this step.
Back into the sauce they go for a final dip and simmer. Since you're using warmed sauce it's likely thickened a little over this time so it's really not necessary to go any further. I will say that a true pro would then put foil on a broiler pan and pop 'em into the oven at medium heat for a few minutes to "seal up" the sauce and make them a little less messy. I skipped that step as I was too anxious to try 'em. The argument can be made that after the first dip in sauce you go straight to the oven, then afterward dip them one final time and serve. I think the second frying makes a huge difference.
If you want to add heat (meaning spice), use more Frank's or break out some real hot sauce while simmering. I did not. These will be Buffalo-style, meaning yes, they're spicy. That's the whole point of the salad dressing. A purist may want to have some celery on hand; I didn't.
If you want to reduce spicy heat, just simmer the sauce a little while then remove from heat. The cooking process burns off the non-spicy ingredients to some extent, but they're still going to be spicy. Maybe add some tomato juice or V8 to the mix in place of some of the Frank's to tame it down.
I dipped these in Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, and I have to say I was amazed at how good they were for such low cost and effort with the sauce. I have my own wing-sauce recipe that I don't expect I'll use anytime soon because even though it's better, the difference just isn't worth the time. Was this the best Buffalo chicken I've ever had? No. They were the best I've had in town, though (I haven't made my full recipe since Escanaba
). Wing Street, Domino's, and every local restaurant can suck it. Though we don't have 'em here, Bennigan's, TGIFriday's, Applebee's and Hooters can all suck it as well. :dance: Most places charge up the yin-yang for wings and even more if they're boneless. I had less than $5 into the whole show and they were boneless to boot. Chicken breast? A little over a buck. About a buck's worth of Frank's if you buy it by the bottle, maybe a buck's worth of canola, so little pasta sauce and bread crumbs it's hard to register (literally about a dime's worth of each), and about 50 cents' worth of ranch because I buy Hidden Valley.
And no, my own full recipe does not produce the best Buffalo chicken I've ever had... but the place that did is long gone out of business.
Ingredients:
Boneless chicken breasts, drained (I got about 11-12 strips out of one)
Bread crumbs
Canola oil
Frank's Red Hot (the standard stuff, not the wing sauce)
Store-brand pasta sauce (I again used Shur-Fine meat sauce--I'm getting a ton of mileage out of that $1.65 quart!)
Ranch or bleu-cheese salad dressing, according to preference
That's it. That's all I used. The real effort in wings is making them the right way, which most places do not do.
Prepping the chicken involved cutting into strips about 1/2" thick across the width. The longer strips I cut in half so the longest one was a little over 2". Had I known what I was going to do with this chicken before inspiration struck, I may have marinated it in teriyaki ahead of time. This was literally a last-minute thing. Bread the chicken with the crumbs, making sure to coat evenly and completely.
The sauce is amazingly simple, and the amount I made left only a little so if you're serving a number of people, this is really only enough for one boneless breast:
1/2 cup Frank's Red Hot
1/4 cup pasta sauce
Mix together and simmer on lowest heat in a small saucepan. That's it. I used a 1-quart simply to have reasonable depth to the sauce since I made so little.
OK, take a frying pan and pour in your canola oil, to a depth of 1/4" or a bit more. Put it on medium heat. You want the oil up to temp when the chicken hits it. Drop your strips in, single-layer and with enough room to work. Cover. It won't take them long to fry, but stoves differ so keep an eye on 'em. When the edges of the upper side turn a golden brown, flip them, cover, and cook for a like amount of time. Remove and set on a plate with a paper towel to soak up the grease until you've got all your chicken deep-fried the shallow way. Do not remove the canola from heat. You still need it.
Drop several strips into your Buffalo sauce, still on low heat. Roll them around so they get coated evenly, and allow a few minutes for the sauce to simmer into the breading. When you're satisfied they've simmered enough, return directly to the still-hot canola oil and fry 'em again, obviously turning once; approximately the same cook time as your first round. Remove to a plate, again with a towel, until you've got them all done with this step.
Back into the sauce they go for a final dip and simmer. Since you're using warmed sauce it's likely thickened a little over this time so it's really not necessary to go any further. I will say that a true pro would then put foil on a broiler pan and pop 'em into the oven at medium heat for a few minutes to "seal up" the sauce and make them a little less messy. I skipped that step as I was too anxious to try 'em. The argument can be made that after the first dip in sauce you go straight to the oven, then afterward dip them one final time and serve. I think the second frying makes a huge difference.
If you want to add heat (meaning spice), use more Frank's or break out some real hot sauce while simmering. I did not. These will be Buffalo-style, meaning yes, they're spicy. That's the whole point of the salad dressing. A purist may want to have some celery on hand; I didn't.
If you want to reduce spicy heat, just simmer the sauce a little while then remove from heat. The cooking process burns off the non-spicy ingredients to some extent, but they're still going to be spicy. Maybe add some tomato juice or V8 to the mix in place of some of the Frank's to tame it down.
I dipped these in Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, and I have to say I was amazed at how good they were for such low cost and effort with the sauce. I have my own wing-sauce recipe that I don't expect I'll use anytime soon because even though it's better, the difference just isn't worth the time. Was this the best Buffalo chicken I've ever had? No. They were the best I've had in town, though (I haven't made my full recipe since Escanaba
). Wing Street, Domino's, and every local restaurant can suck it. Though we don't have 'em here, Bennigan's, TGIFriday's, Applebee's and Hooters can all suck it as well. :dance: Most places charge up the yin-yang for wings and even more if they're boneless. I had less than $5 into the whole show and they were boneless to boot. Chicken breast? A little over a buck. About a buck's worth of Frank's if you buy it by the bottle, maybe a buck's worth of canola, so little pasta sauce and bread crumbs it's hard to register (literally about a dime's worth of each), and about 50 cents' worth of ranch because I buy Hidden Valley.And no, my own full recipe does not produce the best Buffalo chicken I've ever had... but the place that did is long gone out of business.