Easy Recipes - Oven Fried Chicken

Well recently I was talking to my brother about cooking. He's just starting to really cook for himself and said that he keeps finding himself cooking the same things over and over again and wanted to try something new, but his cooking skills are still very beginner and a lot of recipes sound too hard. When I thought about it, most recipes aren't really that difficult, sometimes they just aren't worded in a way that beginner cooks can really understand.

So since I've been posting a lot of recipes anyways, I've decided to spend some time putting up some recipes that are written out in a way that anyone can feel confident making them. If you are a more advanced cook you can still enjoy these recipes, and I'll include a short version for those that want it at the end. Enjoy! :)




For our first recipe I decided to post Oven Fried Chicken. Craig asked for some easy chicken recipes, so the first few will probably be chicken related. Also, they will probably all feature the boneless, skinless chicken breasts since they're very versatile and easy to use. But feel free to substitute for other cuts of chicken. Bone-in chicken works great too, just be sure to adjust your cooking times (it will take longer since they're thicker) and to check that they're done before serving. So here we go!


Oven fried chicken

My mom gave me this recipe, and I especially love it because while I like fried chicken, I hate frying. Plus this leaves you plenty of time and oven burner space to make up mashed potatoes, stuffing or any other sides you want with it. This recipe is very flexible and you can change the spices to your taste, if you're feeling adventurous go for a more complex combination, or go simple if you aren't sure. Don't be afraid to experiment with it, you really can't go wrong!

(For 2 people I typically use 2 pieces of chicken)

chicken
flour
1 egg
milk or water
butter, about 1/2 a stick
oil, like vegetable oil or olive oil
spices

2 bowls
1 baking pan like a cake pan, something deep and wide enough to lay the chicken in

While your chicken is thawing you can make up the coatings for it. (To thaw it I put it in a bowl or plate and microwave on defrost for 5 mins, flip them over and put them in on defrost for 2-5 mins more, depending on how thawed they seem after the first 5)

Get 2 bowls and put about 1 cup of flour in one, you might need more if your pieces of chicken are large, add another 1/2 cup or so if they're big. You can always mix up more later, so don't worry.
You can add things to the flour like salt, pepper, other spices like oregano, chili powder, parsley are good too, really anything you like. If you have breadcrumbs, oatmeal (the plain kind), crackers that you can crush up, you can mix those into the flour too. Even things like cereal can be good on it. But if you don't have anything you can just put flour, salt and pepper and it's good like that too.

This batch I added some Ranch Seasoning to the flour mixture, it's really good and has a nice mix of flavors that are great for chicken already put together for you. A note when adding pre-mixed seasoning like this: always check the ingredients on them before adding salt to your food. Some pre-mixed seasonings have a lot of salt already in them and if you add your own salt it will be way too salty. You can always let people add their own salt at the table later on.



Now crack your egg into the second bowl and add a little milk or water to it, not a lot, just some like if you were making up eggs to cook or french toast batter. Beat the egg mixture with a whisk or fork. If you have hot sauce you can put a little in, it's pretty good with it and doesn't make it too spicy, but adds a nice flavor. You can also put spices in the egg batter if you want.
Get your baking pan out and the butter. Cut up your butter into small pieces or slices and put it in the bottom of the pan, you want to spread it out so it's not touching and kind of layers the bottom so your chicken won't stick.

Now's a good time to set your oven temperature at about 375*

Get your thawed chicken out and slice each piece in half the long way. If they're really big pieces you can cut them into thirds. Think of like the size of chicken strips, you want it like that.

Set up your counter so you can easily work with your chicken strips. I set mine up so the baking pan is on the left, then my two bowls one in front of the other, then my chicken on the other side. It makes it easier to work with your chicken if you set up everything before so you aren't jumbling it around with gross raw chicken hands lol.



Take one of your chicken strips and dip it in your flour mixture (only work with one strip at a time so it doesn't get too messy). Make sure it's coated on all sides.



Then dip it in your egg mixture. It might seem like the flour all came off, but that's ok. The flour helps the egg to stick to the chicken.



Now dip your chicken back in the flour and make sure it's completely coated. Now lay it flat in your pan, right on top of the butter pieces. Keep doing this with all the strips, try to make sure they aren't touching when you put them in the pan.



Your hands will probably get all clumpy and stuff from dipping the chicken back and forth, and that's ok, lol. It comes off easier if you use the dish sponge to scrub your hands. You can try using forks or only using one hand for wet and one for the dry ingredients, but you'll probably still get a lot on your hands, it happens.

Now that all your chicken is in the pan, pour some oil in so it comes up to the bottom of the strips. You don't need to to completely cover it, but you want enough so that it will fry the chicken. If it isn't going around the chicken, you can tilt the pan to spread it around more. You can't really go wrong with how much oil you use, just make sure it at least covers the bottom part and isn't so much that it goes way up on it.



Put it in the oven and let it bake for about 15-20 minutes. It should start to look a little brown, but not too dark yet. Flip each piece over, using tongs or forks, be very careful because the oil is very hot. Let them cook again for another 10-15 minutes, they should look nice and crispy and golden brown just like fried chicken strips. When they're done you can put them on paper towels to drain, but there shouldn't be too much oil left on them anyways, so I usually just plate them up and enjoy!






Oven Fried Chicken

(The short version)

chicken
flour
1 egg
milk or water
butter, about 1/2 a stick
oil
spices

Preheat oven to 375*

Mix flour, spices (salt, pepper, oregano, chili powder), and any other toppings you may want. Bread crumbs, crushed crackers, oatmeal and even cereal taste great, experiment with different combinations.
Mix egg and milk or water in another bowl, add spices or hot sauce, whatever you think would compliment your flour mixture well.
Cut up and layer butter in your baking pan to lay chicken on.
Slice chicken into strips and dip into flour mixture, then egg mixture, then back into flour mixture.
Layer chicken in pan and pour in oil until it comes just up to the chicken.

Bake at 375* for 15-20 mins, and then flip, bake another 10-15 minutes, chicken should be golden brown.
Drain on paper towels, or place directly on plates and enjoy!

Much too soon for snow!

I woke up this morning, opened the living room blinds and this is what I see....



This is just crazy. All I can say is I hope it's all gonna melt today also, lol.

yummy breakfast!

My mom saw this on a Paula Deen cooking show, we can't even remember what it's called, but it's probably one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten for breakfast.

Yummy Paula Deen Breakfast-

12 Frozen white dough rolls (they're just dinner rolls in the frozen section)
1 package *cook & serve* (not instant) butterscotch pudding mix
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 stick of butter, melted
chopped pecans, optional

Place frozen rolls in a bundt pan or similar large baking pan (make sure it has high sides).
Sprinkle pecans, pudding mix, and brown sugar over frozen rolls.
Pour melted butter over it all, cover with plastic wrap and let rise overnight (or at least 10 hours).

Next morning: remove plastic wrap and bake @ 350* F for about 1/2 hour.

I half it when I make it since I'm only making it for two people. A dozen of these would be way too tempting to eat them all, haha! It works out just fine halved too, I just guess when the package of pudding mix is half way, but you could measure it too. I use a loaf pan to make mine in, but when you're making a full batch you really want like a bundt pan or a casserole dish, something that's deep enough for the dough to rise.

Here they are when you first mix everything together (I know it isn't pretty lol).


This is the next morning, after they've risen, and before baking.


And here they are after baking about to be devoured :D


I'm not sure what it is about that butterscotch pudding mix, but it makes such a delicious sauce for these. My mom said that she tried it with a vanilla pudding mix one time, but it just isn't as good as this. I've also used margarine when I've run out of butter but I must have this. It still works fine but doesn't blend into the sauce quite as well as the butter does, you end up having to stir it around quite a bit after you get the rolls out of the pan to get it to mix. It still tastes the same though ^_^

Birthday Cake!

Here it is:





It is half chocolate cake, half yellow cake. I mixed some purple food dye into part of the yellow cake mix. Then I put strawberry frosting on it, and melted some white chocolate chips, which I also dyed purple, and swirled that on top of the frosting. As weird as it sounds, it's actually really yummy, lol.

what i did over x-mas break.

First we went to go visit my parents in MA, I find it really funny that the winter there is much worse than here, but everyone still seems to think it's the other way around no matter what I say. The last few days that we were there there was a good amount of snow-fall, which was perfect for snowman building!

Here's my mom and I working on the garden-gnome snowman!


And here's Tony with the finished garden-gnome snowman :D


It was a lot of fun, we brought our Wii and had a great time playing the sports games on that with everyone. We even got my mom playing, who isn't big on video games. I'll probably have a recipe up soon again, my mom made this awesome thing that she saw on Paula Dean's show. We have no idea what the name of it is, but omg it's delicious. It's a breakfast food that you will want all the time it's so amazing.

After x-mas at my parents, we then went to Tony's parents in TX, so we got a couple weeks to warm up really good before coming back to cold MN, lol.

Here's a couple of my fav pics that I took while we were there:







We had a lot of fun visiting everyone, although I am glad to be back with the ferrets, I did miss them a lot. And Minou had finally put on her winter coat and weight while we were away, so we came back to this big belly, lol!

peanut butter cookies for when you don't have eggs

So http://www.allrecipes.com/ is easily one of my fave sites ever to use. I think I've mentioned them before, they just have nearly anything you'd want to cook or bake in tons of variations. Tonight I wanted to make cookies but I had no eggs. So I went on a search for egg-less cookies. And peanut butter cookies are always wonderful, so I decided to try these. I also chose this recipe because people had reviewed that they scaled to down and it works just fine still. I was able to scale it down to make only 6 cookies. I like this cos then I don't have 2 dozen cookies sitting there wanting me to eat them.

I tend to write my recipes out very simply. I put c. for cups, t. (lowercase) for teaspoons, and T. (uppercase) for tablespoons. I find this saves me lots of time writing and saves room on my recipe cards. I'm also known to write b.s. or b.p. for baking soda and baking powder but I'll save that for some other time, lol. Lots of people have been confused when they look at my recipes, so I thought I'd share. Also for cookies I don't say mix blah blah with blah first... :P I learned a lot about cookie making at the Blue-Bird Acres Farm Market's bakery from all the wonderful ladies that worked there (sadly it's closed now). And the Cookie-Queen, Vicky always told me to just dump in all the ingredients and mix. Which is what I do. It works and I don't care what anyone says about that.

Without further blah blahs, here is my new found fave recipe:

Peanut Butter Cookies (without eggs)

1/4 c. shortening

1/4 c. peanut butter

1/4 c. white sugar

1/4 c. brown sugar

2 T. milk

1/2 c. + 2 t. flour

1/4 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

pinch of salt

bake @ 375 degrees F. about 10-12 minutes. Don't let them cook too long, if they've turned dark brown, chances are good they're already burnt.

Some notes on the recipe:

This last time I made it I was also out of white sugar, so I doubled the brown sugar and it still comes out wonderful. I also added some peanut butter-chocolate swirled chocolate chips which were yummies :D Just try to wait until they cool down a bit before taking them off the pan... I know it's hard. This last time I was very impatient and had put a foil liner in the pan when I made them. I picked up just the foil liner, with the cookies on top, and laid the whole thing in the freezer for like 2 mins, lol. They were actually still warm in the middle, but had cooled enough to pick them up. Enjoy!!!

yes i'm working on it

well, i had some issues with where i was storing my photots online for things like my banners and icons for my pages. kinda ran out of room, lol. so i'm working on re-sizing everything and getting it back to "normal" (hahaha) and then i might start posting randomness again. maybe.