After a couple of indulgent months of eating and drinking, hubby and I decided that it was time for a bit of healthy eating and coincidentally our favourite chefs, The Hairy Bikers, brought out a new book: The Hairy Dieters, Simple Healthy Food.
After ordering from Amazon, the book duly arrived and we scoured the pages for a recipe that grabbed our attention and we settled on the Southern Fried Chicken recipe.
This is their thoughts on the dish:
Actually, as you will see, this chicken isn't fried but baked, which means it is way lower in calories and fat but still so good. Chicken drumsticks are cheap and tasty, so are ideal for this recipe and as they take a while to cook the crumb coating browns and crisps up nicely. You could also use thighs or breasts if you prefer. These are great served with some salad or you can pop them in a lunch box to take to work.
Ingredients
Serves 4
Prep: 15 minutes plus marinating time
Cooking time: about 40 minutes
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp ground black pepper
200ml buttermilk
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
8 chicken drumsticks, skinned
75g breadcrumbs
1/2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tbsp olive oil
sea salt and black pepper
How did I get on?
The first step was to marinate the chicken in the garlic and onion powder, thyme and black pepper with half a teaspoon of salt and the buttermilk and Worcestershire sauce. This is when it is best to look at the recipe beforehand as this needs to marinate between an hour and overnight.
We chose to use chicken breasts instead of drumsticks.
When the chicken has marinated, set the oven to 200oC/Gas 6 and line a baking tray with parchment.
Mix the breadcrumbs with the paprika and season with salt and pepper.
Dip the chicken in this breadcrumb mixture and arrange them on a baking tray. Mix the oil with a tablespoon of water and brush this over the drumsticks. Then bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, turning once or twice during the cooking time.
And there you have it, a quick and easy meal. We cooked some corn on the cob, onion rings and we made some Boston Baked Beans using our Thermomix.
Thoughts
This was extraordinarily easy to do, it tasted delicious and it was an ideal Saturday night meal, together with a bottle of cider!
Thermomix
This is an amazing piece of equipment for the kitchen, it can make anything from curries to pasta dishes to soups. It was on the expensive side but we use it about three times a week and it does save on a lot of washing up.
You can purchase it from Vorwerk and one of the things which impressed us was that a representative from the company came round our house and gave us a live demonstration.
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