Chicken fingers (p. 430) with Barbeque sauce (p. 586) and Honey mustard dipping sauce (p. 566)

I was totally unmotivated to cook Monday night and we barely have any food in the house. That being said, we did have some boneless, skinless, (tasteless?), chicken breast segments that we accidental paid a fortune for and I had managed to thaw. So what to do with them....

Chicken fingers (p. 430)! I love chicken fingers! And I imagined I would like homemade chicken fingers better homemade then the chicken selects at McDonald's that I have been over-eating (I WILL win Monopoly!). There are two recipes in TJOC for chicken fingers in different sections of the book. One of them requires a deep fryer. I have a deep fryer...but I'm not ready for that mess yet. So, p. 430 has a recipe that just requires stovetop frying! Perfect!

Hmm...there one egg yolk was twice the size of the other! One of my eggs was obviously from a mutant chicken.



Breading was kind of fun. You dip the chicken in an eggy mixture,than in a breadcrumb mixture. After about two of them your fingers get coated in a chicken-y, egg-y, breadcrumb-y, nast-y mix. Even so, it's fun, like playing in a sandbox. I think I paid more to have the chicken precut, which is incredibly stupid--I'm not THAT lazy! I'll pay more attention next time.


Breaded chicken fingers, pre-frying...




After cooking...it is possible that these fingers had a titch too much frying, although they didn't taste burned at all!




I decided to make homemade Barbeque sauce (p. 586). Awesome! So easy that I was talking on the phone with my mother for most of it...Now I warn you, this is Carolina-style BBQ sauce so it's pretty vinegar-y and tangy. If that isn't your style, then you won't like it. Josh and I use a lot of BBQ sauce and this made a lot of it, so I think we will be making this again. We also had to simmer it for way longer than 5 minutes to thicken it BUT that may because of the evil that is elevation.



As I started to boil the sauce, it was pretty red and chunky...





After being boiled, it was lighter....mmmm....and tasty....





Josh wanted to help, so I told him to stir the sauce for a while!

And then Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce (p. 566). This was awesome! It's pretty much mixing dijon mustard (pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?) and honey (local Colorado honey, of course), but it's amazing how tasty that combo is! And here is a secret, non-TJOC hint that Josh gave me--if you mix a little mayo in, it's like the honey-mustard in fast food joints!

Honey mustard sauce--it's even good if you dip Brussels Spouts in it!

I'm not afraid to say it, I gorged myself on chicken fingers and sauce. I managed to pack away well over half of them. Oh my god they were great! I'm salivating just thinking about them....


My helpful cleaning crew....