Crispy Oven Fried Chicken
This is really easy and my family loves it.. Not going for a low-cal meal with this one, but it makes juicy-crispy chicken with very little effort or mess in your kitchen.
After trying boneless-skinless chicken breasts from just about every store and butcher shop in my town, for me the hands down winner for best tase and quality is the Whole Foods 365 Private Label organic boneless-skinless chicken that comes in the multi-piece pack of three.
You can substitute boneless skinless thighs here if that is your preference, but make sure to increase your cooking time and you want a final cook temperature of 165 degrees.
INGREDIENTS - Serves 4
4 boneless-skinless chicken breast halves
1/2 cup ranch dressing (any brand - I use Simply Dressed)
2 cups cornflakes
3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon each of Kosher salt, chili powder (I use ancho chili powder), poultry seasoning and smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (you can add more for additional heat or leave it out if you don’t like the heat)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Directions
Prep chicken: trim away any loose pieces of the breast halves. Make sure that they are similar in size for even cooking. If the one end is quite thicker than the bottom, pound slightly with a flat meat mallet, but don’t get it too thin,
Place chicken in zip top bag, pour in ranch dressing and marinate in the refrigerator at least 2 hours or up to 24 hours.
Pulse bread (ideally white sandwich bread or a soft loaf of Italian - one or two slices will be plenty) into crumbs in food processor (I use my mini processor for this). If you can tell by site you have about 3/4 cup then go ahead and add cornflakes and seasoning and process until cornflakes are coarsely chopped and seasoning is well combined. *If you’re not sure how much breadcrumbs you have after processing, just dump them out & measure, keeping what you need or processing more, put them back in the processor and then continue.
NOTE: You can marinate chicken and prep the breading the night before or the morning you want to serve and continue with the recipe about 30-40 minutes before you want to eat.
When ready to bake, cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil (easy clean up & you aren’t using the baking sheet to brown anything so using foil here is great). Coat a baking rack with non-stick spray and place it on the prepared baking sheet. Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix breading with 2 tablespoons vegetable oil. Remove one piece of chicken at a time from marinade and coat well in breading, turning to get both sides. Place each piece on prepared rack. Bake for 20 minutes or until internal temperature reads 160 degrees. Depending on the size of your chicken pieces or if you are doing chicken thighs instead of breasts, cook time may need to be increased 10-15 minutes.