Chicken Strips

American Entree

CHICKEN STRIPS

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds chicken breasts
1 big garlic clove
1 cup flour
4 eggs
2 cups bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon lemon-pepper
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 cup peanut oil
1/2 cup sesame oil

PREPARATION

Cut chicken into 1-inch wide strips. This will be easier when the chicken is already partially thawed. Mince garlic clove.

Get three mixing bowls. Put flour in first bowl. Beat 4 eggs in second bowl. Put bread crumbs in large, third bowl. (You can make bread crumbs by putting toasted bread or old, dried bread in a food processor and mincing it.) Add minced garlic, cayenne, coriander, lemon-pepper, white pepper, salt, and tarragon.

First, roll a chicken strip in flour until all sides are covered. Second, submerge the strip in the egg bowl. Third and last, roll the chicken in the bread crumbs until it is completely covered with bread. Repeat these three steps for all chicken strips. The order for this procedure is particularly important.

Put peanut oil and sesame oil in electric skillet. Heat at 350 degrees. Drop the coated chicken strips in the oil. (Be sure to keep the skillet’s lid between you and the skillet as hot oil might splatter out toward you when you drop the chicken into the skillet.) Cook for 4 minutes, or until golden brown, and turn all strips. Cook for another 4 minutes until the same wondrous color shows up on all of them.

Put paper towels, or napkins, on plate. Put strips on towel. This dish is even tastier with the honey-mustard sauce recipe listed in the next recipe. (A culinary cliffhanger!)

TIDBITS

1) Time to reveal a secret. No one will believe you’re a serious cook unless you say the words, “golden brown,” every five minutes.

2) In the same five minutes, a rocket achieving escape velocity will have soared 2,100 miles.

3) That rocket will fall apart as stage after stage separates and plummets to the Earth.

4) You, however, will not fall to pieces by saying, “Golden Brown.”

5) The famed country singer Patsy Cline fell to pieces whenever you walked by.

6) Country music usually mentions: infidelity, beer, and trucks, but never chicken dipped in honey-mustard sauce.

7) Time to expand the genre.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.