Back when I was heavily pregnant in 2015, neither could I move around much nor engage in much activities. I was therefore very reliant on surfing the web and doing things online to keep me going by the day. One of the things that I did was look for online courses on Coursera. There was one particular course that caught my attention – ‘Stanford Introduction to Food and Health’ – a course conducted with videos by Dr. Maya Adam from the Stanford University. One of the things that she demonstrated in her videos was how to make chicken tenders from scratch and how to make them better than the ones sold in fast food restaurants or frozen fridges in the supermarkets.
My first thought was that it is easier said than done. First of all, regardless of how little effort it takes to make these nuggets, there’s still some (even if a bit) of effort and time required to make the nuggets by yourself, including the preparation of ingredients and the cleaning up after that. The hassle of preparing frozen nuggets out of a pack is probably two loads lesser and therefore more tempting most of the time. It therefore takes a lot of convincing to want to make them from scratch, especially since it’s only for a simple meal at home.
Today, I finally gave a similar oven-baked chicken tender recipe a try – two years after completing the course on Coursera (there are always so many other recipes that distract me and get me off course!). I was finally curious enough to want to see how oven-baked chicken tenders taste like and how crispy they can get in the oven. Goodness gracious – am I sold! They taste reallllly crispy and tender, and not as oily as those sold outside. It still takes a bit of effort though (short-cuts will get you nowhere), but I am definitely going to make more batches of this in the future!
And yes, no more frozen nuggets from the supermarket anymore. They are going to stay where they are on the shelves!
Ingredients:
- Chicken breast: 600g, sliced into strips
- Milk: 1 cup (about 200ml)
- Butter: 1 tbsp
- Plain flour: 1 cup
- Breadcrumb: 3/4 cup
- Garlic powder: 1 tsp
- Onion powder: 1 tsp
- Salt: 1 tsp
- Ground blackpepper: 1/2 tsp
- Olive oil: 2 tbsp
- Mayonnaise or ketchup: to serve
Method:
- Marinate chicken strips overnight in milk.
- Preheat oven at 200 degrees Celsius.
- Melt butter in preheated oven. Spread evenly in tray.
- Combine plain flour, breadcrumb, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and ground blackpepper in mixing bowl.
- Drain chicken from milk. Coat chicken strips evenly with flour mixture.
- Place strips onto baking tray without overlapping. Drizzle olive oil over strips.
- Bake 15min. Flip strips over and bake for another 15min. Drizzle more olive oil if necessary.
- Serve hot and crispy with mayonnaise or ketchup.
Tricks:
- Remember to thin out the chicken strips enough to let them cook easily in the oven. Leaving the strips too thick might lead to undercooking on the inside of the meat.
- I drizzled olive oil on top of the chicken strips for baking so as to ensure more even baking of the strips in the oven.
Disclaimer:
- This recipe was kindly adapted from Cakescottage.com’s ‘The Best Oven Fried Chicken‘. The title speaks for itself – I’m certainly very impressed because it tastes sooo good!
Serving:
About 20 chicken tenders
