Oven-Fried Chicken

Fried chicken is one of my favorite foods, but actually frying anything in my apartment is out of the question. I hate the oily fatty fried smell that hangs around afterwards. Plus it gets in my clothes and hair and...just yuck. I have worked in the food industry, primarily making fried foods, for 7 years and still cant get over that gross stale-oil smell.

Anyway, and more importantly, my smoke detector is just way too sensitive for frying. It goes off when I boil water. I think it would go into a panic and have alarms going of throughout the building if I tried to actually fry something. So, I have been looking for oven-fried chicken recipes for about a year now. I've finally got one that I actually like.

Oven-Fried Chicken

Ingredients:

1 lb chicken drumsticks, skin removed

1 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs

1 tablespoon seasoning salt (I used Lawry's) 

1 tablespoon dried thyme 

cooking spray 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 F 

Combine buttermilk, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. Set aside.

Place chicken in a gallon zip top bag. 

Pour buttermilk mixture into zip top bag with chicken. Refrigerate and marinade 30 minutes to 8 hours. 

In a shallow, wide dish (I used an 8x8 cake pan), combine flour, breadcrumbs, seasoning salt, and thyme. 

Toss marinaded chicken in flour mixture until completely coated. Shake of excess flour mixture. 

Grease a baking sheet very well, place a wire rack on top of it, grease it very well, and place drumsticks on rack. Spray each drumstick with cooking spray - it shouldn't be drenched, but the whole thing should look wet. 

Bake 40-50 minutes, until chicken is completely cooked and juices run clear (165 F).