Yesterday, I made coconut chicken strips! It was way easy to mix the stuff, took quite a bit of time to dip 'em but overall... spectacular for something that I can use in my salads for lunch! This is courtesy of Our Best Bites: Mormon Moms in the Kitchen recipebook (which I am not a huge fan of due to the binding but the recipes are good so far) with a few of my adjustments to account for lack of ingredients.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees
You will need about 4 chicken breasts cut into strips of about 2 inches.
In a bowl, mix together:
1 cup of panko bread crumbs
1 cup of sweetened coconut shreds that you've diced to be smaller
1 1/2 t garlic salt (they used powder, I only have the Lawry's garlic salt)
3/4 t curry powder
1/4 onion powder (dunno what that is so I took some dried chopped onions and tried to crush 'em a bit before adding 'em and I used about 1/2 t)
1/4 t cayenne pepper
Mix the above well. I used a tupperware box, put the lid back on and just shook it up and shook my booty along with it (that's 5 calories burnt from cooking)!
In another shallow dish, put in 1/2 cup of flour....
In another another shallow dish, whisk 2 eggs...
Now, here's the fun part.
Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray some PAM on it. First, carefully dip the chicken strip into the flour - shake off any excess - then carefully dip it into the dish with the whisked eggs, again let it drip and shake off any excess - then dip it into the crumb mix and then place it onto the cookie sheet.
Bake for about 10 minutes, check if it's done, if not, continue for about 5 more minutes - this is important so your chicken doesn't go dry! My mother in law taught me that every "book" recipe for chicken should be reduced by 5-10 minutes to ensure it's juicy and ready instead of overdone which is why I did 10 (book says 20.. those pesky liars!) but of course, it depends on your oven too!
You'll know when it's ready as the coconut and bread crumbs are sort of a light yellow with a bit of brown crispiness.
Now, make some sauce too! Whisk 3/4 cup of apricot preserves (book says 1 cup of apricot pineapple but I only had apricot and 3/4 left), 2 t of soy sauce, 1/4 t of Dijon (I used grey poupon cuz I'm high class), 1/4 t curry.
Wala! There you go!
Today for lunch, I used three strips, combined it with 2 cups of spinach, a handful of granola, a handful of craisins, some poppy seed dressing and BOOM - winning, my lunch was served. So simple!
