Day 2 of the experiment....

Last night I decided to do a baked "fried chicken" recipe. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am do not really like chicken on the bone! However, my husband ended up buying some chicken breasts that must have been on sale. In the past, I've make "fried chicken" like meals where the breading just lacked flavor. Generally, I pick recipes based on whether or not my mouth waters while reading the ingredients. The recipes for oven fried chicken have not made my mouth water but had yummy ingredients like Captain Crunch as the main ingredient of the outer coating. Besides, the main ingredient those recipes lacked flavor. In the past, I also had not had oven fried chicken without the skins, which is where most of the best flavor seems to come from.

My challenge yesterday was to find a chicken recipe that called for "bone in" and the main catch was to find a recipe that was flavorful enough so that the missing skin would not matter.

I found a recipe in the book Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Cookbook (4th edition) called "Crispy Oven-Fried Chicken", page 138. What I liked about this recipe was that it called for "Cornflakes" as the main ingredient for the breading, and I already had some in the pantry which meant that I did not have to run to the grocery store with two little kids. I also liked the fact that there were some other flavors in the recipe such as salt, pepper, paprika, as well as ginger (which sounded gross). My only question for this recipe was: How do you get the breading to stick to the chicken? I did not see any ingredient that would really hold the breading on to the chicken. Besides the breading question, I knew that this was still not going to be that flavorful so I decided to research the concept of oven fried chicken by looking at my next favorite cookbook the Hungry Girl 300 under 300, which I think currently is a New York Times Best Seller!

The Hungry Girl has a recipe called "Chrispity Chrunchity Drumsticks" on page 354. the HG (Hungry Girl) recipe has salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, dried oregano, chili powder and a liquid egg substitute to hold the breading mixture on. The HG recipe calls for bran cereal for the breading which I am not a fan of, but am getting more used to.

I decided to go with the corn flakes and paprika from the first recipe and all of the ingredients from the HG book except for the bran. I doubled all of the ingredients to give the chicken a bit more "kick."

As the chicken was baking it sent an aroma that was so delicious smelling through the house, I could not believe it. As a rule, I do not like it when my house smells like the food that I am cooking, but this smell was delicious.

The number one food critic in my house is my two year old. The chicken was a hit for her. She likes flavorful food, and at times a bit spicy too. I was really impressed with how well the breading stuck to the chicken. It also had a crisp to it. I think the key to the crisp is cooking the chicken at a higher temperature (between 375 degrees and 400 degrees depending on the recipe) and not covering the chicken. The only soggy part of the chicken was the bottom where the chicken touched the baking dish.

Considering that the chicken skin was removed, this meal had a lot of flavor. I would definitely make it again!