Chicken Nuggets

There isn’t a person in the south who doesn’t have an insatiable appetite for Chick-Fil-A chicken.  Unfortunately, there are some in the family who can’t enjoy Truett Cathy’s gift to mankind due to allergies.  So, I set out to come up with a suitable replacement for chicken nuggets and chicken strips that can be made at home and enjoyed by everybody.  Now, I’m not saying this rivals Chick-Fil-A in any way but it is a pretty great recipe for chicken nuggets.

You will need…

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tsp kosher salt
• 2 tbl paprika
• peanut oil for frying

Flatten the chicken breasts to 1/2” with a mallet.  Cut into strips or nuggets.

Place the chicken in the buttermilk and refrigerate for 4 - 6 hours.

When you’re ready to cook, bring the peanut oil to 350 degrees in a deep container on the stove top.

Combine the salt, spices and flour in a bowl and mix thoroughly.

Toss the chicken with the flour to coat evenly.

Fry in two batches for 3 minutes or until done.

Bagel Time

I started another batch of bagels last night and baked them this morning for breakfast.  This time I made six “everything” bagels and six plain bagels.  I used Jeffery Hamelman’s technique and recipe from his book “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes”.

The basic ingredients for bagels include high-gluten flour (King Arthur Sir Lancelot), diastatic malt powder, salt, yeast and water.  That’s it.  The rest is technique.

I began by bringing the ingredients together in the mixer.  I mixed for 3 minutes on first speed to incorporate and then another 5 minutes on second speed to develop the dough.

After mixing, I let the dough rest for 1 hour at room temperature.  After resting, I divided the dough into four ounce portions and shaped them into bagels.  I let them rise in the refrigerator overnight.

The next morning I brought a large pot of water to a boil to which 5-6 tablespoons of malt syrup had been added.  I boiled the bagels for one minute on each side and then placed them in an ice bath for 4 - 5 minutes to cool.

Once the bagels had cooled down, I placed them top-side down in a plate of “everything” toppings.

I then baked the bagels at 500 for fifteen minutes on a baking stone.

They turned out great except that I had too much salt in the toppings.  I’ll be cutting the salt in half next time.

For the plain bagels, I simply skipped the toppings step and put them straight into the oven.  They turned out great as always.

Mongolian Chicken

We made some rockin’ good mongolian chicken tonight.  I’ll get some pictures next time…

Recipe
3 chicken breasts sliced thin
1 tbs minced fresh garlic
1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1/3 cup green onions sliced to 2 inches
1/3 cup thinly sliced white onion
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
3/8 cup dark brown sugar
Canola oil
3 tbs cornstarch

Sauce
Lightly saute garlic and ginger in a skillet.  Add water, soy sauce, and dark brown sugar and bring to a simmer.

While the sauce is heating up, saute chicken on medium-high/high in a separate skillet. 
When the chicken is finished, add to the sauce.
Add cornstarch to chicken and sauce to thicken.
When ready to serve, stir in green and white onions.
Serve over jasmine rice.

Bonus: gluten-free

Pizza Night

One of the Christmas gifts to myself this year was a Bosch Universal Plus counter-top mixer.  Although it’s labeled as a mixer, I didn’t get it for its mixing ability.  Rather, I was more interested in finding a kitchen appliance that I could use to mix and knead different doughs for pizza, bagels, bread, etc.  It just so happens that the Bosch was the one mixer that was up to the challenge of handling large amounts of dough so I ordered one from Amazon.

Once I got the mixer it was time to put it to the test.  Pizza is one my favorite foods to make at home and the Bosch Universal Plus has made making pizza as enjoyable as eating pizza, if that’s possible. 

The key to a great pizza is a great dough.  If you can get the dough right you’re halfway to a great pizza.  Before I bought the mixer I would attempt to make and knead my dough by hand.  I say “attempt” because I was never comfortable with the technique of hand kneading.  I always felt that I was incorporating way too much flour during the kneading process resulting in a dry, tough dough.  This resulted in a pizza with a dense, bready crumb which is not very desirable in a great pizza.  I knew there had to be a better way.

The passionate pizza folks over at www.pizzamaking.com have proved to be an invaluable resource in the quest for the perfect pie.  After quite a bit of lurking, learning, and investigating I came across a video that demonstrated the success that one of the posters had using the Bosch Universal Plus for making pizza dough…

The poster included his recipe and so I set out to replicate his success using the new 16” pizza screen and 16” round baking stone that I had purchased.

Recipe
564g King Arthur Sir Lancelot High-Gluten Flour
356g filtered water
3/16 tsp instant yeast
14.5g kosher salt
6g olive oil

Technique
Put water, salt and oil in mixer.
Put flour and yeast into mixer.
Ran for 20 - 30 seconds on 1 to just bring ingredients together.
Let rest for 20 minutes.
Mixed on 1 for 6 minutes.
Let rest for 20 minutes.

After the dough was done resting I divided the dough into two balls, 570g for the pizza and 340g for some bread sticks.  I greased two separate containers and placed the dough in the refrigerator for cold fermentation for five days.  Yes, five days.

On the day we were ready to bake the pizza I took the dough out of the refrigerator about 2 hours prior to baking.  When it was time to bake I placed the baking stone on the bottom rack of the oven and pre-heated at 550 for 30 - 45 minutes.

When the oven and stone were heated thoroughly, I opened the dough out onto a 16” pizza screen which I had dusted liberally with flour.  I used approximately 8 ounces of 6 in 1 brand tomatoes straight from the can for the sauce and about 10 ounces of diced Polly-O brand whole-milk mozzarella.  We topped it off with turkey pepperoni.

When the pizza was dressed I placed the screen in the oven on the second rack from the top.  After five minutes, I moved the pizza off of the screen and onto the baking stone on the bottom rack for another five minutes.  Five minutes of cooling and we were ready to eat.  I think the results speak for themselves.  Without a doubt, this is the best homemade pizza I’ve ever made.  I’m looking forward to experimenting with other ingredients, styles, and types of pizza.