*Bonus cooking tip: The best way to thaw frozen chicken is to put it in a bowl of warm/hot salted water. ½ tsp salt for 3 Chicken breasts is usually enough, with just enough water to completely cover the meat. This thaws the chicken fairly quickly, (without partially cooking it like the microwave) and the salt both adds flavor and preps the chicken for seasoning.
These chicken strips are pretty easy, made from scratch, and utterly delicious. Once I got used to making my own, no restaurant chicken basket has been able to measure up. I use a deep fryer (an investment I highly recommend), but if you don’t have one you can fry with a large pot filled with oil, just use a lot of care and caution.
Homemade Fried Chicken Strips
Serves 4
3-4 smaller Chicken breasts cut into ½ inch strips
3 tsp Salt (divided)
1/2 pint Buttermilk
1 ½ cup Flour
2 tbs dry mustard
1 tbs Paprika
2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 ½ tsp Onion Powder
¾ tsp freshly ground black pepper
Rub 1 tsp salt into the chicken pieces and place in a med. mixing bowl, pour the buttermilk over the chicken, stirring just enough to make sure all the pieces are coated. Refrigerate chicken in buttermilk for an hour. This can be made up to three hours ahead.
Dry mix: In a medium-large mixing bowl, combine flour, mustard, paprika, onion, garlic, black pepper and remaining (2tsp) salt. Mix lightly with a wisk or fork to until dry ingredients are evenly blended.
After Chicken has properly marinated in the buttermilk, place on the counter beside the dry mix, ready a large cookie sheet on the other side. This is the labor intensive part, you can use tongs, a fork or your fingers. Take each piece of chicken out of the buttermilk one at a time and dredge in the flour mixture until evenly covered. Try to save as much buttermilk as you can.
Place dredged pieces on the cookie sheet so they aren’t touching.
Preheat your deep fryer to 165 degrees (chicken setting).
Then, take ANOTHER cookie sheet, and place it on the other side, of your mix bowls and swap the buttermilk with the dry mix, now dip each piece back in the buttermilk, and back into the flour, then lay out on the other cookie sheet. (Granted, there may be other ways to do this, but this is the best way I’ve found to keep organized.)
Once each piece has been coated twice, drop them one at a time gently into the fry oil. Depending on the size of your fryer or fry pot, try to limit it to between 4-6 pieces at a time.
I’ve found 3 minutes is usually the perfect cook time, a little more or less based on the size of the pieces. There’s also an art to listening to the fryer, the oil will bubble loudly an energetically at first, but once the chicken reaches the same temperature as the oil, it the fryer calms considerably. I still recommend sticking to a timer to be sure.
Dry each batch on paper towels as you go. When all the strips are nicely fried to a golden brown, serve on plates.
I recommend dipping sauces. Honey BBQ and Ranch go fantastically with this mix. Enjoy!
