Recently I noticed that chicken strips were on super sale, for a much lower price than chicken breasts (I get the antibiotic-free, hormone-free ones, so they’re way spendier to begin with). Anyway, somewhere rattling around in my head was the phrase “Panko Crusted Chicken Strips.” So, I roped K into making some.
We had Panko on hand already, and we mixed in some salt, pepper, and sundry Italian herbs and spices.
Prepped the staging area:
The chef is whisk-mad!
So first we dredged each chicken strip in beaten egg:
Then coated it in the Panko/herb mixture:
Then we placed each strip on one of the racks from our oven:
Someone was helping lurking.
K carefully slid the baking rack back into the oven, and then placed a foil-lined baking sheet onto the rack below, to catch crumbles.
They cooked up pretty quickly and evenly. I had hoped the Panko might get slightly more golden brown, but that’s a minor quibble.
They turned out to be good! They held their moisture well, and the Panko/herb mix was tasty. K had his with BBQ sauce, while I opted for some Dijon.
This was a really easy dish to make, though not one that I will do by myself anytime soon (all that touching of chicken and raw egg! I need to get over my germ phobia first). I do prefer chicken breasts to these strips, but I think this would work with those, too – they’d just need to cook longer.
A few recipe suggestions that are similar:
Cheddar Crusted Chicken Fingers: this is pretty much the same thing you made, only there are some additions to the breading (and the strips/chicken breasts are soaked in buttermilk, which makes them extra-tender)
I use the velveting technique from this recipe if I want to make Chinese restaurant style chicken. I usually pair the chicken with some soba and the peanut sauce from a cookbook called “Ripe” instead of using the sesame chicken sauce in the recipe.
These beer chicken tacos completely rule. I put extra beer in because they got a little too dry from cooking all day. Also, I like beer.
Thanks, Nanette! These are awesome, and we both love beer, too. I’ve saved these in my evernote recipe file!
I love panko-extra crispy! Are you venturing into fish eating? If so, I like to mix up panko with some lemon -pepper (or whatever) seasoning, a little olive oil, and then I don’t even dip and coat-I just pat it on top of the fish and bake it. It’s awesome.
Thanks for the fish tips, Sarah! I haven’t tried cooking any yet – I’ve eaten fish at a restaurant a few times, but since Karl is not a fan, we haven’t tried making it. It sounds really easy, though!
What’s Panko? I don’ty believe we have it in Australia.
Hi Judith! It’s actually a Japanese product, from what I understand. They use it on Iron Chef and shows like that fairly often, or at least that’s where I was introduced to it. It’s basically tiny bread crumbs, but really light and fluffy. They’re more like flakey bits of bread crumb, I guess. Anyway, they’re good for breading things that you want to end up crispy.