Tag Archives: party food

Jan 9 2013
fried chicken

How to Make Fried Chicken Bites

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I love fried foods. As I’ve said before, I don’t own a frier because that would be so bad for me. But sometimes I just need some fried chicken. Is that just me? I made fried chicken bites for dinner and I thought I’d share.

I think my version is pretty easy. It can be a bit messy though. This time I used breadcrumbs I made from a loaf of bread from Panera, but I have used Panko and Progresso breadcrumbs as well as crushed Ritz crackers. I think I actually prefer the Ritz with some seasoning mixed into them and mixed into the flour/cornstarch bowl.

I could have left the chicken in bigger pieces or in stripes for chicken fingers but I like to chop it into smaller pieces because it cooks faster. Also, since it is the same thickness I don’t have to worry as much about some parts of the chicken being cooked and other parts still being raw.

For this recipe, the amount of everything depends upon how much you want to make. I was frying two chicken tender strips.

Ingredients:

  • boneless, skinless, chicken chopped up into bite sized pieces
  • corn starch
  • all-purpose flour
  • milk
  • egg
  • breadcrumbs
  • oil

1. In a small sauce pan, pour oil, I used canola, enough to make it about an inch or more deep. Again this depends upon your amount of chicken you’re frying.

2. Chop the chicken into bite sized pieces

3. In a bowl, mix 3 parts flour to 1 part cornstarch.  The cornstarch helps everything stick to the chicken better as opposed to just flour.

4. In another bowl, with a fork, whisk 1 egg with 1/4 cup milk

5. In yet another bowl have a lot of breadcrumbs.

fried chicken

The order is going right to left because my saucepan is to the left of the breadcrumbs and yes my counter is that tiny!

6. Now, coat in the flour, dunk in the egg wash, and cover with breadcrumbs the pieces of chicken.

7. Carefully drop the chicken in the oil to fry or else the oil could splash up.

fried chicken

cooking in oil

Now my chicken wasn’t completely submerged in the oil, so I let it cook to a golden brown on the bottom, about 4 minutes and flipped them over with my tongs so the other side could fry an get a golden brown color as well.

7. With a slotted spoon, remove the fried chicken bites.

fried chicken

Yum!

Now it’s time to enjoy the fried deliciousness. I prefer to dip mine in a ketchup ranch combo. Am I the only one who does that?

I know the coat, dunk, and coat mixtures work pretty well for fried pickles too. I wonder if they work for cheese balls. I need to try it because I am missing some Culver’s cheese curds.

Dec 5 2012
guacamole recipe

My Guacamole Recipe

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guacamole recipeOne thing I love is chips and dip, especially tortilla chips and guacamole! But I find it difficult to find good guacamole at grocery stores. One time I accidentally bought guacamole flavored dip! So it wasn’t real! It was full of randomness and things I couldn’t pronounce that didn’t need to eat. I made it a mission to make my own. Here is the guacamole recipe that I came up with, with the help of my husband. 🙂

Ingredients:

  • avocados
  • tomato, chopped and without seeds
  • onion, chopped
  • cilantro, chopped
  • juice of half of a lime
  • olive oil
  • salt
  • pepper

Directions:

  1. Peel, remove seeds, and mash avocados in a small to medium bowl
  2. add tomato, onion, cilantro, olive oil and lime juice to avocado and mix
  3. season with salt and pepper and stir into dip

I usually do 2 large ripe avocados, if they’re still hard, it’s difficult to make dip, so go for the ones that are a bit mushy. I also use one roma tomato, half of a small red onion and a handful of cilantro before it’s chopped. But the amount of all of the ingredients completely depends on your own taste and the amount you want to make.

 

Dec 4 2012

Mozzarella Cilantro Burger Recipe

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One favorite in my apartment is burgers! Mozzarella Cilantro burgers! They were a favorite when we lived in a house too, when we had a real grill. Oh I do love a good grilled burger on a toasted bun.  The mozzarella cilantro burgers are delicious and usually we have the ingredients sitting in the fridge so it’s nice if we have a craving for a good burger we can make one that day.

Ingredients:

  • 1 lbs. ground beef, I use 80%/20% because it forms patties better than leaner ground beef. I usually cook them on my George Forman and that cooks a lot of the fat out them. 
  • 1 bag/2 cups of shredded mozzarella
  •  a couple handfuls of chopped cilantro
  • some ketchup
  • 1 egg

mozzarella cilantro burger

 

Directions:

1. put meat, mozzarella, egg and squeeze some ketchup into a bowl

2. chop cilantro and put into the bowl

mozzarella cilantro burger

 

3. get your hands messy and mix the ingredients together

4. then make patties, I have a little patty maker it’s handy but not necessary 

mozzarella cilantro burger

ready to be grilled

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Grill them up, on a grill, on a George Foreman, in a skillet, or my new fave, in the broiler! For medium burgers on the broiler, use room temperature patties, colder ones take more time, broil for 7 minutes, flipping the patties at the 3 minute mark.

6. Enjoy the goodness of a mozzarella cilantro burger!

Nov 25 2012
cheese

Chili Recipe

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We stayed home for Thanksgiving. It was nice weekend just the three of us and in the tradition of Thanksgiving, we needed to make something that would give us a lot of leftovers. I didn’t really want to tackle a turkey again so we went with chili. I say we because Joshua helped A LOT with this since I have never made chili before and we weren’t using a recipe. It turned out delicious! Here is our chili recipe.

Heres what we used:

  • 2 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes
  • 2 little cans of tomato paste
  •  1lbs. ground sirlion
  • 1lbs. ground mild italian sausage
  • 1/2 package of bacon
  • 2 poblano peppers, chopped
  • 1 red bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 can black beans, drained
  • 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
  • 1/4 of a garlic bulb chopped
  • 4 large basil leaves chopped
  • a lot of chili powder
  • a lot of oregano
  • black pepper
  • salt
  • powered mustard
  • celery salt
  • tarragon
  • some beer
  • cheese
  1.  put crushed tomatoes and tomato paste in a big pot, and put it on the stove to simmer
  2. I then cooked the meat in a skillet, I seasoned the sirloin with red and black pepper, salt and chili powder while it browned, then I cooked the sausage, followed with the bacon, and then put it all in the pot with the crushed tomatoes
  3. leaving a little bit of the bacon grease in the pan, I sautéed the peppers, onions, and garlic a little bit to get them to soften and sweeten just a bit but still leaving them with a crunch to them, and put it all in the pan
  4. add the basil to the chili and stir to combine it all
  5. add some beer, we used an ale, probably about 6oz, but it’s really up to the person making it, but too much, will make it runny
  6. then it was time to season the chili, which consisted of throwing a lot of spices in it and tasting it until we liked it
  7. we left it to simmer, covered, for a few hours, stirring occasionally
  8. when it was time to eat, we topped it with some shredded colby jack, but cheddar would be good on it too
yum

Chili!

It ended up having just a little bit of a kick to it, well in my opinion it did, but I don’t handle spicy food too well, but it was amazing! It was nice to eat chili on this chilly weekend. 🙂 It’s thick enough to make a chili dog, or what I did when it got a bit too spicy for me, scoop a cracker into it and eat it that way.
cheese

cheese!

Definitely had enough leftovers to last and some to even freeze for other chilly winter days!