I cannot believe this! Last night I actually made fried chicken legs that looked, tasted and smelt just like the real thing! I have never before considered this dish as I do not know how to get the coating to stick to the chicken legs throughout frying and they usually end up black and burned on the outside and pink and undercooked on the inside – not at all suitable fare for kids!
....But I Do Now!.......
Yesterday it actually worked and I know it was probably the combination of reading recipes, having the time and the blissful scene as the two little darlings generously took it in turns to shake the legs in a plastic bag full of flour that made the entire process so successful.
I was inspired when my son came home from school to tell me that “Bernard” had had chicken legs in his packed lunch that day. As ever my crazy, nutrition obsessed, mummy mind lit up right away, envisaging days when I could actually break up the monotony of cheese sandwiches every day with the occasional chicken leg for lunch instead! So last night we tried it.
Do you want to know the secret I discovered…..? Did you ever think you could get this excited over a bit of deep fried chicken? Well…….the secret is to cook the chicken legs first!....Yes that’s it, simple as that really just cook ‘em first – then by the time you come to fry you are simply browning the outside and don’t have to worry if they are cooked all the way through. Now excuse me if you’ve known this since you were born….I haven’t and it was a bit of a revelation I can tell you. The thing is if the chicken is already cooked, even though you are deep frying (yes I know I know!) there is actually very little oiliness to the whole thing as you are simply submerging for a few minutes until brown, and then you take it out and drain it and there is hardly any grease there.
What we did was boil the chicken legs (in milk!) first. You could of course boil in water, but I have to say that the milk does give a nice flavour. Wait until cooked and try not to over boil as it really makes a mess quite difficult to get off the hob! It probably took about 20 minutes all in all, I am always overly careful with chicken…..
Once cooked you cool slightly and then shake in a bag full of flour and seasoning, this can be anything from salt and pepper to paprika, cayenne, mustard powder – any flavourings that you’d like the coating to taste of really, we went for salt and a pinch of smoked paprika because that’s what we had in the cupboard!
Then you fry them in quite a lot of sunflower oil (I used up a whole bottle – quite a lot, but then we don’t do it every day and my not quite so health driven husband used the leftovers to fry chips when he came home later that evening!)
That is it. You can watch them turn brown – fascinating – well when it is 6pm on a school night and the kids are famished and you’re desperate to find something to take their mind off it! They loved them and ate them all up for dinner.
Serve with as much salad or green vegetables as possible.
Of course the next day Olly completely refused to have the cold ones for his packed lunch…..well ….. You Can’t Win them All!......
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