Coconut Chicken with Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce

Ingredients:

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 large eggs

1/4 c. coconut milk, optional

1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1 c. panko bread crumbs

1 c. shredded coconut

1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. vegetable oil, divided

1 c. sweet chili sauce

Recipe:

1. Cut off any extra fat globules from your chicken breasts. Cut each breast into 6 strips, diagonally to prevent the end strips from being really short.

2. Prepare your breading station by gathering three bowls. In the first bowl, combine the flour and salt. In the second bowl, combine the eggs and coconut milk. Whisk together until well combined. In the third bowl, stir together the panko bread crumbs and shredded coconut.

3. Place 1/4 c. of vegetable oil in a large heavy duty skillet and heat over medium heat until it is just below smoking. You can test the heat by throwing in a little bit of flour. When it is hot enough, the flour with sizzle and create a lot of bubbles.

4. While the oil is heating, dredge chicken strips. First, coat each strip in the flour and salt mixture. Then dip each into the eggs/coconut milk and finally coat each in panko shredded coconut.

5. Place about 6 strips in the pan at once. There should be only one layer of chicken and about 1-inch distance between each piece. Fry for 2-3 minutes on each side of until they are golden brown and crispy. Place them on a plate with paper towel. Continue frying remaining chicken. Oil might become low, in which case, add the second 1/4 c. of oil.

6. Serve with chili dipping sauce.

Rating: 4 of 5

LaDon wanted to rate these higher, like 4.5, but I didn't like them that much. The chicken was good, but in all honesty, I couldn't taste the coconut at all. It was just a crunchy chicken strip (which are good). I was hoping for a much more flavorful chicken considering all the frying that went on. However, with that said, I did serve these up with some honey-mustard and it greatly improved everything (which means that we didn't use the sweet chili sauce). For the sake of crispy chicken strips for LaDon, I would make these again.

Source: Budget Bytes, Coconut Chicken with Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce

Oven Baked Chicken

Ingredients:

4 split chicken breasts *

5 T. milk

1 c. unseasoned bread crumbs**

1/2 t. onion powder

1/2 t. garlic salt

1/2 t. paprika

1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. pepper

2 T. butter ***

*To speed up the process of thawing out my frozen chicken, I've been boiling it in water with chicken bouillon for a few minutes. I think it just enhances the chicken flavor and makes everything that much better.

**I only had Italian Style bread crumbs on hand.

*** Completely forgot about the butter until after the chicken had started cooking, so I just sprayed the tops with some cooking spray.

Recipe:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with foil.*

2. Add milk to a shallow bowl. In a large bowl combine bread crumbs, onion powder, garlic salt, paprika, salt and pepper.

3. Dip chicken in milk and roll in bread crumbs. Place chicken on cookie sheet.

4. Place pats of butter on chicken and bake for 1 1/2 hours until juiced run clear and internal temperature reaches 170 degrees. **

*Skipped the foil and sprayed a dish.

** A few changes here. I forgot the butter as mentioned above. Worked out fine. In fact, it gave the chicken a very crunchy coating which was so tasty. Secondly, I thaw my chicken out by quickly boiling it, but I kind of forgot and almost cooked the breasts through completely. So, instead of cooking the chicken in the oven for 1 1/2 hours, they were only in there for 25 minutes. Much faster and still so tasty!

Rating: 4 of 5

So, even though I used Italian style crumbs, I thought the coating was so good! Plus, I loved the crunch of it all. I don't really know what else to say about it other than I liked it. Oh, how about, I could taste the paprika and it was the perfect amount.

Source: Mother Thyme, Oven Baked Chicken

Skinny Baked Mozzarella Sticks

Ingredients:

12 sticks part-skim, reduced sodium mozzarella sting cheese (Sargento) *

1 large egg, beaten

2 T. flour

5 T. Italian seasoned breadcrumbs

5 T. panko crumbs (confused? just a fancy word for Japanese bread crumbs.) **

2 t. Parmesan cheese

1 T. dried parsley

olive oil cooking spray ***

* I just used the cheese sticks I had in the fridge.

** Didn't have any on hand, so I didn't include them.

*** Just used the cooking spray I had on hand

Recipe:

1. Cut cheese in half to give you 24 pieces. Place cheese in the freezer until cheese is frozen.

2. In small bowl, whisk the egg. Place the flour on another small dish. In separate bowl, combine bread crumbs, panko, Parmesan cheese, and dried parsley.

3. Dip the frozen sticks in flour, shaking off excess, then into the egg, then coast with the crumbs. Repeat this process with the remaining cheese placing them on a try with wax paper.

4. Place cheese back into the freezer until ready to bake (this is a must or they will melt before the crumbs get golden.)

5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and lightly spray with oil.

6. Place frozen cheese sticks on baking sheet. Spray the stops of the mozzarella sticks with a little more oil and bake in the bottom third of your oven until crisp, about 4-5 minutes.

7. Turn and bake an additional 4-5 minutes watching them closely so they don't melt.

Rating: 3.75 of 5

Well, our mozzarella sticks completely melted out. I should have taken them out at 5 minutes rather than sticking them in for the second 4-5 minutes. They were already pretty melted when I turned them. That went wrong, and I think my parsley is a little old. I kept tasting dirt. Gross. So, the melted cheese part was good, but new parsley and less cooking would make these really good.

Source: skinnytaste.com, Skinny Baked Mozzarella Sticks