Fried Chicken Tenders

So, we got a deep fryer. Katrina has a Goodwill not too far from her place and it’s easy to just pop in and see what’s on the shelves on the way home from work so we try to check in as often as we can. The fryer kinda looks like a rice cooker so we almost overlooked it, but once we realized what it was and saw that it was only $10, I snagged it instantly.

It’s a DeLonghi that holds a little over two pounds of food. There’s no temperature dial or gauge which we were a little nervous about, but according to the manual it is set to 350º which should be solid for most items. There’s a little spigot that pops out to drain the cooled oil making cleaning pretty easy. This thing must have been used only once or twice – it still had the packaging stickers on it. A wipe-down with some soap and water was all it took to make it look brand new. 

The other weekend we went to a cookout at a friend’s and he made some unreal adobo fried chicken, so that got us hankerin’ to try our hand at it. We decided to just do some basic chicken tenders as a test run to see if the fryer even worked.

We did a few different variations to see what produced the best results and ultimately landed on a pretty solid formula; the trick is to double batter before frying for seven minutes. We seasoned the tenders with black pepper and Vegeta (which you don’t actually say like the dude from Dragon Ball Z).

After seasoning we dipped the meat in buttermilk, tossed in a bowl of seasoned flour and repeated. After breading the tenders we let them sit for about 10 minutes so that the flour soaked up all the moisture. Fried ‘em for 7 minutes and then transferred to a rack to cool for a second. Insane crispness - the breading was super thick and crunchy. Popcorn chicken is actually pretty easy to do this way also – dice the tenders into chunks do the same double batter process. Works wonders.

Buttermilk Chicken Tenders

Ingredients

1lb chicken breast tenderloins
1 cup buttermilk

Vegeta seasoning

Breading mix, in a bowl:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup rice flour
1 tbsp Paprika 
1 tsp Pepper

Directions

1. Season tenders with Vegeta and black pepper (we got pretty liberal with the stuff) 

2. Dip individual tenders in buttermilk, then roll ‘em around the bowl of flour. Now do it again! You want there to be "clumps" of the flour mixture, which will give the chicken strips a solid, crunchy coating (as seen in the photo below).
3. Let the battered and floured tenders sit for 10 minutes before dropping them into the fryer.

4. Lay tenders in a single layer in the fryer basket, or drop em in your pot of 350º oil and fry for about 7 minutes. Transfer to paper towels or cooling rack to dry for a bit before breaking those things open!

If you want to add some spice to your golden little nuggets, cut some Frank’s Red Hot sauce with melted butter until it’s of a desirable heat level, then toss your fried chicken in it and serve. 

If you're like Katrina and want to up the breading to chicken ratio, try making popcorn chicken! Cut the chicken tenderloins into bite-sized pieces and follow the same method for double breading with the buttermilk. Fry these for 6 minutes and enjoy!