Last night, my husband asked what plans I had for dinner. Groceries arrive today, and we were at the end of the food week, so I had vague plans of "something with the chicken breast...?" And then he suggested a thing I've been wanting to try for ages, but he's always been, "And what else...? That's not a meal!" But last night, it was a meal, and it was good enough to satisfy me, and he loved it because he's never had the real thing to compare it to.
We had some steamed broccoli as a nod to health and nutrition (and to break up all the heaviness of fried food), and then I made a copycat Chick Fil A nugget recipe I've been wanting to try for aaaaaaages! I ran into quite a few hiccups along the way (let me count the ways things went wrong...!).
1. Halfway through marinating the chicken, I remembered we're really low on plain flour, and I'd just ordered some to arrive today, but it was still last night at the time. My husband pointed out the four other types of flour and said we'll be fine.
2. At the end of marinating, when I started to put my dredging bowls together, I remembered we were also out of eggs, and I'd just ordered some to arrive today, but it was still last night at the time. My husband made a slurry of milk and some of our precious plain flour (!!) to act as a binding agent, and it worked surprisingly well.
3. When mixing up the breadcrumb coating mixture, the icing sugar came out as rock hard lumps. We tried, but could not crush them. So we sieved them out, then used caster sugar. This wasn't great, but it wasn't the worst thing, either.
4. My husband got very enthusiastic about helping me, and I have no idea what our proportions were. The coating needs work, but it wasn't too far off.
5. One of the conditions my husband set for agreeing to this meal was that he didn't want to put the breadcrumb-coated chicken into the deep fat fryer and ruin the oil, so I had to shallow fry them in a pan on the stove. It worked, but it was not perfect. The nuggets were not a uniform colour all the way around.
But despite all that, my husband was really impressed by the flavour of the chicken, and his skepticism about the sugar in the breadcrumb coating was assuaged. Chick Fil A nuggets will happen again! Sorry, no photo... but, I mean, you guys have seen lumps of breaded chicken before.
As a bonus, I finally got to free up some of the 'fridge space taken up by mostly-empty pickle jars (I've been saving pickle juice for months). One down....
