Friday, September 19, 2008

Cooking Up A Storm-Baked Crunchy Chicken Bites



I'm not sure if it's the cooling weather and the desire for some inside comfort food, but we're cooking up a storm this week. Our oldest has enthusiastically tried some new recipes and we're enjoying his creations.
We have a fabulous math book called The Math Chef by Joan D'Amico & Karen Eich Drummond. Once a week the kids usually make one of the many recipes. This week we focused on metric conversions and made a recipe called Baked Crunchy Chicken Bites (or Chicken Nuggets to us). Occasionally I change up the recipe a bit and this is highlighted.
Note: 2T=30 ml
Time
10 minutes to prepare plus 10-12 minutes to cook
Tools
cookie sheet
2 1-gallon resealable plastic bags
medium bowl
wire whip
small bowl
rolling pin
cutting board
paring knife
oven mitts
Ingredients
vegetable oil cooking spray
1/4 c. flour
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 egg
2 Tablespoons 2% milk= ? ml of milk
2 dozen snack crackers (we used Saltine Crackers and used more than 2 dozen)
4 boneless chicken breast halves
Steps
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Spray the cookie sheet with vegetable oil cooking spray. Set aside.
3. Place the flour, black pepper, and cayenne pepper in one of the plastic bags. Seal the bag and shake it to mix the ingredients well. Set it aside.
4. In the medium bowl, whisk the egg and milk together.
5. Put the crackers in the second plastic bag and seal the bag or close with a tie. Crush the crackers by rolling the rolling pin over the bag until the crackers are crumbly. Put the crushed crackers in the small bowl.
6. On the cutting board, use the paring knife to cut the chicken into bite-size pieces, about 1 inch by 1 inch.
7. Put the chicken pieces into the first plastic bag with the flour mixture. Seal the bag or close with a tie, and shake to mix. Wehn all the pieces are dusted with flour, remove the chicken from the bag.
8. Dip the chicken pieces two-by-two into the egg mixture and then into the cracker crumbs.
9. Place the chicken pieces in a single layer on the sprayed cookie sheet.
10. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes (we baked for longer) or until golden brown. Remove cookie sheet from oven using oven mitts.

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