Breaded Chicken Tenders

This isn't my picture but rather comes from the internet but the finished product will look very similar to this.

Ingredients:

6-8 Chicken Tenders
Olive or Canola Oil
2-3 eggs
1-2 cups Gluten Free Flower
2 cups Gluten-free Breading Material
Kosher Salt
Fresh Cracked Black Pepper



For the breading material you can use gluten free corn flakes or you can use gluten free Chex Mix.  We use the Chex Mix since it's cheaper.  With both of them you'll want to crush the cereal to make something close to bread crumbs.  It can be a lot of work to crush the Chex Mix but I found out using a food processor or stick blender can help things go faster.

For both the flour and breading you'll want to hold back about half of it and then just add more as you need it. This helps to avoid wasting as much flour or breading since you cant re-use the leftovers once the chicken has touched it.

Directions:

1) once the chicken tenders are thawed flatten them out. you can also use chicken breasts and cut them into one inch strips and then flatten them. The way I do this is to use a sturdy spatula and just push down on them until they are between 1/8th and 1/4 inches.  The will get a lot wider during this and it will allow them to cook faster.

2) making sure they are mostly dry (see 'not dripping wet') put them in the flour (also put the salt and pepper in the flour to taste) until they are well coated, shake off the excess. Dip them in the egg till they are fully coated, let the excess drip off for a few seconds.  Then dip them in the breading making sure they are well coated.

3) Then put them in a skillet that has about 1/8 inch oil in it.  In this case you want the oil hot enough that when you put in the chicken it starts to sizzle, but not so hot that it will burn them in less than a minute.  On my pan on my stove medium heat is what is needed.  It should take about 2 minutes per side and they should come out the same color as the picture above.  If you use Chex Mix it'll be more of a fine texture, but if you use corn flakes it may have the texture above.

4) Here is where it gets a bit tricky.  You may have to put them in an oven at 350 degrees for an unspecified amount of time or you may not. Most of the time, just frying your chicken above will not have fully cooked the inside.  The ones I did last night came out looking just like the above chicken and it needed probably 15-20 minutes in the oven, but if you had more heat or cooked yours in the pan longer you may not need as long.  My advice is to put them in at the 350, cook for 10 minutes, and then check ever 5 minutes thereafter till done.

Now pour some gravy over those and enjoy!

Thus begins the recipes

I have been under orders to be gluten free for 62 days.  There have been a few times that I've unknowingly at the time had gluten food.  One was a deli chicken, and the other was some ground up steak thing at a local restaurant. I've lost around 10-15 legitimate pounds - and I say legitimate cause its not from being sick.

There are a few difficult things that I've discovered so far:

1) it's really difficult to eat out.  This wouldn't be so bad if I could have dairy, but trying to find something that is dairy and gluten free and still worth paying for is very difficult. as such our eating out budget is now 1/6th of what it used to be.

2) pot lucks suck.  they suck a lot.  The challenge here is that if i'm going to have something I have to know every ingredient, and the only way to do that is to ask the people who made it.  Despite what you may think, it is really hard to ask them about each ingredient in minute detail without sounding like either a jerk or a complete food snob.  

3) planing makes like far far easier.  Before I had these issues, I would come home, figure out what to have for supper and less than 30 minutes later I would be eating something tasty.  the first few weeks after being gluten free it was very difficult to figure out what to cook, and it all takes forever to actually cook.  I send 2-3 hours each day cooking and generally don't get to eat until 2 hours after i've come home.  If I plan our my 'menu' at the beginning of the week then when I get home I don't have to spend an hour figuring out what I can eat with the things we have on hand. Planing ahead also helps to insure that I have food to take to work the next day.

However, overall things are going OK.  I am pretty busy so there wont be that frequent of updates here but I am using a website called pinterest to amass recipes. you can find my account here: http://pinterest.com/markdelarm/

There is where I will be putting all the gluten free recipes I find.  To post in it I have to have a picture of the food, so some times i'll post a recipe here that doesn't exist online with a picture.  This'll allow me to post it on my pinterest.  

Till next time, stay strong!