6/7/09

Bon Appetempt goes All American

The recipe is from Martha's little magazine, Everyday Food (everyday, Martha, really??) And here is her version:


And ours:

Yes, we made the whole menu, starting with...

a 24 hour soak in buttermilk.

Let the dredging begin. Chicken fingers.

Once you've dredged each piece twice, you are done and technically you can eat it.
However, we wanted to see the recipe through, so we decided to cook the chicken:

Apparently rosemary has a great internal clock, so as the recipe states, there is no need for a thermometer - when the rosemary hisses, remove and the oil is ready for the chicken.
At this point our house started smelling like KFC.
Meanwhile, Matt whipped up the parsley, mustard vinegrette...

Before:

After:
Here is the only place where things got weird. We put the half-cooked chicken in the oven to finish it off and within five minutes, started hearing some crazy sounds coming from inside. When Matt opened the door to see what was what, billows of black smoke started pouring out of it to which my reaction was: "Can we get a picture of it for the blog?!" (Sadly, we could not. (Smoke doesn't picture well?))

Anyway, we blame this on our baking sheet which doesn't have any real edge to it, so we think the oil was dripping onto the oven floor and turning into smoke. Despite all this, the chicken came out fine:

What did we learn from this Bon Appetempt? Fried Chicken is relatively easy, just very messy and if your attempting with no dishwasher and DIY tools, the process will require a couple rounds of dishes... The reward is well worth the work, though. The meal was tasty, relaxed, and super fun.

6 comments:

Reggie Lee said...

Wow. I was always too intimidated to make fried chicken at home... now I'm gonna give it a try!!!

Andrea said...

Yum! You know what I think you need? All-Clad jelly roll pans. They wouldn't let that grease drip into your oven. Send Mombers to the next sale!

those wacky shut-ins said...

Another good thing about YOUR version is that the different foods don't touch each other. "Bon Appetempt goes All American and OCD!!!"

Mary Anne said...

Do you know what else is funny? Martha's cover says "no-mess fried chicken!"

Whatever, MARTHA. Bon Appetempt told me it's "very messy."

I think you need some sort of label for recipes wherein Martha blatantly lies.

That fried chicken look sooooooo good though! I want to go to there.

Rachel said...

Maybe she means "FOOD everyday"? Slightly different meaning, yes? In the words of fast food chain, Checkers, "You Gotta eat!"

Heather said...

You could try sticking another pan on the rack below your chicken or some tin foil. I do that for pies.