Anyways, I love fried chicken. But alas, it is not healthy. Anything that is deep fried is not healthy. Whats that you say? You already knew that? Yes, I like to point out the obvious. So that is why I love this recipe, its baked, not fried. Just like my title. Mwahaha!
Not only is this recipe healthier, it is easy. You start with a whole chicken cut up but I'm sure it would work with any kind of chicken. I just wanted the authentic fried chicken type pieces. So my husband hacked the chicken up the night before (this is one thing I do not do in the kitchen) and then I rinsed and patted dry the pieces. They all went in a ziploc with 2 packages of ranch dressing mix (or 6 tablespoons for me as I have a container of it from Sams) with 2 cups of buttermilk. I actually bought the buttermilk but like it says on the Betty Crocker site you can "pour 2 tablespoons of white vinegar or lemon juice into a 2-cup measuring cup and add enough regular milk to measure 2 cups, stir, then let stand for 5 minutes". Finally you turn the chicken in the ziploc several times to coat and stick it in the fridge overnight. Definitely leave it overnight, even with it staying in the mix overnight it still did not have a strong ranch flavor. So I can't imagine not leaving it for many hours.
The next day you mix a package of Betty Crocker cornbread mix, 1 teaspoon of paprika, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of seasoned salt and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper in a shallow dish. Take the chicken pieces and dip them in the mix to completely coat. Then place the pieces on a 15x10x1 inch pan (I used my baking/jelly roll sheet) sprayed with cooking spray. Spray all the pieces lightly with cooking spray and stick in a 425 degree oven for 35-40 minutes. Mine were in for 35 minutes and they were temping. The recipe says 170°F for breasts; 180°F for thighs and drumsticks but we did 165, I think anything more and it would have been dry.
The chicken was very moist and because of the cornbread mix, it had a sweet (yet spicy!) hint to it. Like I said before, you can't really notice much of a ranch flavor but that was fine, I just made ranch mashed potatoes on the side! It was delicious!
A couple of things to note, that I plan to incorporate if I make this recipe again:
- The chicken was pretty spicy. I kind of figured that going in since there was 1 teaspoon of pepper and pepper always makes things spicy but I added it anyways. I'm still on the fly on whether or not I'll decrease this amount next time but I wanted to mention it to those of you who do not like spicy food. I'm sure you could just leave it out and it would still be tasty. The cornbread mix really makes the flavor.
- We left the skin on the chicken and next time I will remove all skin. All it did was aggravate me when trying to dip the chicken and it was mushy and disgusting to eat once it was cooked. The thing about fried chicken is that the skin gets crispy but when you bake a breaded chicken with skin, the skin just gets mushy and blech. My husband was worried the breading wouldn't stick without the skin but it definitely will.
- It was more expensive to try and get a chicken the size they want for the recipe, you end up getting a 4-5 pounder instead of 3. I figured I would be ok with one package of cornbread mix to make just one breading mix but no, I was not ok. I had to run to the store to get another mix. So if you are using a lot of chicken definitely double the breading mix.
Tonight is Sweet Onion Mac & Cheese from my Rachel Ray magazine. I'm very excited about this, I love mac & cheese! This time, I promise to take a picture!!!
