Crispy buttermilk baked chicken

[Deleted]

Haven't tried this but I will in November.

Crispy buttermilk baked chicken

serves 6

6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 cups buttermilk
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon hot sauce
2-1/2 sleeves buttery cracker (such as Ritz), about 75 crackers
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/4 cup butter, melted

1. Place the chicken breasts in a bowl or a ziptop bag set on a plate. Mix the buttermilk, Worcestershire, and hot sauce together and pour over the chicken. Cover and leave in the fridge to marinate for several hours or overnight. The longer the better, and it can be up to 24 hours.

2. When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Slice 2 tablespoons of the butter in a baking dish that will fit all the chicken pieces and place in the oven to melt.

3. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter in the microwave or a small saucepan. Place the crackers in a ziptop bag and crush finely with a rolling pin. Mix in some salt and black pepper (I like a lot of black pepper). Spread the cracker crumbs out on a plate or baking sheet. Remove the chicken from the fridge. Shake any excess buttermilk off the chicken, then roll each breast in the cracker crumbs, coating well, and set aside.

When you’ve coated all the chicken pieces, remove the hot dish from the oven and place the chicken breasts in the melted butter. Drizzle the melted butter over the chicken and return the dish to the oven. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour until the chicken is cooked through to an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. You can turn on the broiler for a few minutes at the end to brown the tops if you would like.

www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2014/1024/Crispy-buttermilk-baked-chicken?cmpid=FB

[kit]

I've seen this recipe a few times, each with a slight modification, and have tired them all. They're ALL delicious. In the one I liked best, they added a little grated cheese to the cracker crumbs. The amount would depend on the cheese you select, and your taste.

In another recipe, instead of the buttermilk they diluted mayonnaise with just enough milk to make it 'soupy' and used that for the marinade. Wonderful flavor.

One other modification is to pound the chicken breast to make it thinner and tenderize the fibers so it will absorb more of the flavor.

Thanks for posting this recipe, Alan. I now know what I'll be having for supper.

[Clipper]

I, like Kit, have tried the recipe before. I have used mayonnaise and I have used buttermilk. I think the enzymes in buttermilk tend to tenderize the chicken as well as adding flavor, while the mayo more or less simply makes the chicken more juicy and adds a flavor component all it's own.

I have tried a good many recipes for oven baked chicken. I like Parmesan crusted chicken with sauce and cheese. I mix equal amounts of Panko bread crumbs or cracker crumbs and Parmesan cheese or Romano cheese. I also found that for this particular purpose, the processed grated cheeses from Kraft in the shaker bottle work better for mixing into the coating mixture. I suppose if one is a gourmet or purist, the block cheese, freshly grated is fine. Kathy makes chicken Parmesan with breasts marinated in Hellman's mayo, and coated with corn flake crumbs. When the chicken is baked to the desired internal temperature, she lays a few strips of Parmesan, shaved from the block with a vegetable peeler on top of the breasts, covers that with a couple slices of good mozzarella and slides it back into the oven just long enough to melt the cheeses. Served with home made sauce over the top of it and a side of spaghetti it is quite delicious.

Kit, I have become a fan of pounding all sorts of cutlets before cooking. We love schnitzel and I pound the cutlets, either pork or veal, before cooking. ( we do the mayo marinade with those cutlets also) Done in the oven, pork or chicken cutlets come out great and with no grease. We also vary the cooking and fry the cutlets and especially love a pork cutlet sandwich with a slice of tomato and some lettuce and mayo.

With pork and chicken breasts being much cheaper than beef in recent times, I buy pork loins quite frequently, cut them into chops, small roasts for the two of us, and occasionally into stew sized pieces for mushroom stew. I prefer the "bone in" breasts to the boneless skinless variation and find it just as easy to bone and skin them myself at home.

I have used saltine crackers for the breading, but have never tried the Ritz butter cracker crumbs. Sounds good and I will be trying it soon. I am also going to try the cracker crumb variation on the pork cutlets.

[chris]

Yumm I'll have to save this one for my files

[Clipper]

I have a separate folder for recipes and it is filled with many of those posted by you, Alan, and Kit. With Kathy not progressing as quickly as we would like with her recovery from her last back surgery, I have been rather disinterested in anything other than making sure that the necessary chores get done, and that she gets her proper care. Not much time lately for playing in the kitchen.

Today it is a pork shoulder roast, injected with barbecue sauce thinned with chicken broth and melted butter, and rubbed with mixture of granulated garlic, paprika, onion powder, kosher salt, a dash of cayenne pepper and black pepper. It will be roasted on the Showtime Rotisserie this afternoon, and served with a green salad, as well as macaroni salad. I have become seriously addicted to a greek style salad with almost everything I eat. Romaine, celery, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, pepperocini, and crumbled feta cheese, dressed with a balsamic vinegarette (Kraft bottled dressing) I never thought I would pay $8 for feta cheese to crumble over a salad, but I LOVE it. I can't walk past the cheese case and olive bar at Kroger's without spending 10 or 15 bucks. I have become a fan of the marinated mushrooms, the cherry peppers, pepperocini, and all the various imported olives in brine, sold in bulk for about $7-$8 a lb.

[kit]

The nice thing about the baked chicken recipe that Alan posted is that it's more of a technique rather than a specific recipe, and quite variable according to the cook's imagination. Ingredients can be changed to suit the taste of the person or family it's being prepared for.

Clipper and I both seem to like tailoring the ingredients to our personal tastes. Tonight I'm going to try crushed Cheez-It crackers as a 'breading.' Cheez-It now has 8 varieties of cheese flavorings, so one's imagination can go wild. Each of the crackers have a particular group of spices, so I don't have to add salt, pepper, or any other spice. Simple, which I like a lot. The chicken is now marinating in a mayonnaise/milk 'soup' in the refrigerator, and if the dish turns out okay I'll post the recipe.

[Clipper]

Let us know how that turns out Kit. I have seen the crackers in the store and have been seriously thinking about trying them. I have pretty much given up snacking at night, but a handful of Cheez-its is darn sure a temptation, haha. I have a few saltines with my salad for lunch many days, and a handful of different flavored crackers would be a treat, plus I TOO would try using them for breading.

[Clipper]

While we are on the subject of mayonnaise and chicken breasts, quite some time ago I mixed two or three packets of the taco sauce that comes with your tacos at Taco Bell and used that mayo to dress a chicken cutlet sandwich. It was quite tasty. I may have to try that mayo mix to marinate and baste some chicken breast with. We don't do Taco Bell very often. We are not junk food fans. Kathy likes a hard shell taco or two from there occasionally so we get a couple of taco supremes apiece for the two of us for a quick supper. I love tacos but prefer to make them at home and fry the tortilla shells myself in a skillet. Not crazy about the mystery meat that goes into Taco Bell items, lol. Hmmm. The possibilities are endless. I may have to try dropping a couple packets of that sauce into some vinegarette to put on a salad. I can't be much more than chili powder and an oil base of some sort.

[kit]

So I made the crusted chicken for dinner. I can't say it was 'to die for' because NOTHING is that great, and I can't say it's better than sex (as far as I can remember) but it's very close to both. Here's what I did (the amounts depend on how many fillets you're going to cook). I live alone so I only did one fillet...

Partially freeze one or more chicken breast fillets. When they're JUST firm, butterfly them into 2 thin cutlets. Let them thaw. Put a generous amount of mayonnaise in a bowl and dilute it with JUST enough milk to make it a little runny - not too soupy. Add the fillets, turn a few times, cover and let them marinate in your refrigerator several hours or overnight.

Take a bunch of Cheeze-Its (I used the 'Italian 4-Cheese' variety) and put them in a freezer bag. Crush them with a rolling pin, then add a modest amount of grated Romano cheese and a few turns of freshly grated pepper. No other spices are needed. Mix well and put it on a plate. Let the chicken fillets drain briefly then bread them in the crumbs, turning a few times to coat the whole fillet. Put them on a baking sheet, cover each fillet with a little of the marinade and bake at 400 degrees for 30-45 minutes* until the top browns.

* If you leave the fillets full thickness without butterflying them, bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes. (The browning tells you when it's done)

What I like about this technique is its simplicity. It took me longer to type the instructions than it did to prepare the dish. I'll definitely be making crusted chicken a few more times in the near future. It's just too simple and too tasty not to.

Alan, thanks again for the reminder.