Gluten Free Part 2: Fried Chicken

Writing Recipes in my busy busy busy cooking space!

Yes, we all love terrible pictures of me, don't we?  This is what I look like as I'm writing down different notes on what I'm doing to the food.  My kitchen counter sure does look crazy, but this picture was taken in the middle of a cooking/canning non stop marathon (or so it felt like).  I grew up in Texas, so fried chicken is an art form to me.  Each family has their own unique recipe (or so it seems) and each person makes that their own with slight tweaks.  When I moved up to Michigan, I discovered that the art of chicken frying isn't as common place around here.  There's even a really funny story of me serving fried chicken the first time Mike brought home some work friends, but this isn't the post to talk about that!

Ms. Ashley's Gluten Free Frying Batter!  Y'all come 'n get yerselfs a bite, ya hear?

This time the experiment stemmed from menu planning.  That same wonderful friend and her boyfriend were coming over for dinner and I really wanted to wow them.  Fried chicken (since moving to Michigan) has quickly become my "WOW!" dish I serve to guest when I really want to impress them.  Well, that and what else do you serve with fried green tomatoes (something my friend had previously confessed she hadn't eaten since her gluten free life style began)?  Thus, my challenge began!  This time, however, I did some research first.  I knew what fried chicken should taste like and I knew that I didn't like the all purpose flour I used last time, so I turned to my handle friend Google and a website that talked about the different tastes and consistencies of the flours popped up (I tried to find the exact resource but at the moment, it's been slipping through my surfing skills).  I read through all of them and made a short list of ones I was interested in using.

Frying batter....check!

I decided to use the brown rice flour since it has the heavier consistency (I thought this would stick as a nicer breading and fry up a little crispier) as well as since it was described as having a faint nut flavor (something I could cook and compensate for).  The next part was the tricky part to be honest.  I had to figure out the right mixture of flour and seasonings to get it to taste (the only way I was taught to make my family's fried chicken recipe) the way it should.

Green tomatoes soaking....check!

After about an hour, I was successful   Now, in case you've never fried in this manner (something I've come across before since moving up north) I'll share some tips.  I do one of two things with my frying batter.  I either put it in a gallon size zip lock baggie or a Tupperware container that is big enough to hold what ever I am frying in it.  The reason behind this is so that I can just put the article being fried in, close the lid or top, and just shake to evenly coat it.  I've only ever tried the roll to coat method once.  I hated it.  It got everywhere.  My meat didn't have an even coating on it.  It was not a pretty meal!  Now, I guess I should talk about the oil.  I never turn my oil above medium/slightly warmer than medium because it's really easy to accidentally cook the outside of the chicken but not the inside.

Frying away...check!

It is also easy to hurt yourself with popping oil.  So, you are going to want to pre-warm your oil in the pan.  How much oil you say?  Well, I normally try to pour about a half inch of oil into the pan (this is why my chicken fryer isn't huge) so that I don't have to add more oil as I go.  The trick I've always heard to help tell when the oil is ready to be cooked in is to dip your fingers in some water and let one drop fall into the warming oil.  If it bubbles or reacts, you're good to go.  Mike always describes oil that is at the right temperature as having a "dancing" appearance.  I'll be honest.  My first pieces of what ever I'm frying tend to go in before the oil is pre-heated correctly and thus take longer to cook (but no other differences that I've noticed).

Gently putting in some breaded green tomato slices.

My trick to making fried green tomatoes is to slice them up (after washing them of course) and to let them soak in some cold water while I get my batter mixed.  This helps the tomatoes to hold on to the batter when they are coated.  Also, when you put your green tomatoes into the batter, hang them over the bowl of water for just a few seconds so that any excess water will fall back into the bowl and not into the batter to leave you with little batter balls (unless you like extra fried "crunch" as I've heard it called).  When your oil is the correct temperature (so if you're like me, you won't have to worry about this until your second batch), you'll want to be gentle when putting them into the oil.  If you aren't careful, you will learn all about the reaction of water and oil in an unpleasant (not a fire, just a few small oil "spits") way.

What the tomatoes will look like when first put in.

Now, if you have the edge piece (I always end up with sections of tomatoes to fry that are rounded from the end of the tomato), I recommend putting it rounded side down first so that the batter sticks on better.  I've never timed how long it takes to fry, but I always do it by the color.  You want a dark golden brown color before you flip or pull out.  I always line a plate or a bowl (depending on what I'm serving) with a couple of paper towels so that we don't eat "grease soup".  I've also always flipped and removed with a fork.  I'm not sure why, but that's the way I was taught to do it, so that's how I've always done it (Mike prefers longer utensils when frying.  I think my preference is derived slightly from the fact that I feel more agile and less likely to make a mess if I quickly turn/remove with a fork.).

Almost golden enough to eat!

When it truely comes to the color, with the tomatoes, it won't really matter as much.  Nothing in there is going to make you sick.  So, if you are too excited to let it get a dark golden, pull it off and chow down.  (Also, with the gluten free flour, the cooked goods do tend to take longer to brown up.)  The instructions I've given you so far, apply the same to the chicken.  The only real difference is that you really want to either cut open some of the chicken (we tend to fry tenderloins, legs, or cut up breasts in our house since they are easier to tell when they are done) or check it with a meat thermometer.  As you can tell by this Food Network Guide 165 is the normally agreed upon temperature for chicken.  You want to take your reading from the fattiest part of the meat to ensure it's cooked thoroughly.

Mike cutting up some potatoes for a dinner side dish.

It's time for the fun part!  The recipe!

Adventure in True Love's Own Gluten Free Frying Batter Recipe!

(isn't that a long obnoxious title?)

Ingredients:
1 c. brown rice flour
5 Tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pepper
2 tsp garlic powder

Instructions:

Add all ingredients into a gallon size zip lock bag or container large enough to hold your meat/produce to be fried.  Shake the mix well.  Fry as described above (or as your own preferred method calls for).


And tada!  Another fun (and I know this one was tasty because I tried it) gluten free eating option!  Enjoy!

Leftover Gluten Free Fried Chicken!  

Soap Experiments!

Let's start by seeing my handsome kitty!

Well, I've finally had the time to play with soap making!  (I've been dying to try starting it, but have been insanely busy again)  I haven't played with anything soap in....a little over three years?  Even back then, I really only played with the melt and pour kinds.  At least I was good at fragrance mixing!  Well, do I ever start anything the easy way?

A pretty green for the turtle and frog molds I have.

To start with, and to get back in the basic understanding, I got some melt and pour kits to experiment with.  Of course it was a BLAST!  Who doesn't love mixing smell goods and pretty colors together?  I did a couple of small hand soap batches with this and I was ready to start the "fun game.

Pouring melt and pour soap into molds.

After "playing" I decided it was time to get on to the real game.  Mike had picked up a book a while back  (I will choose not to name the book just yet.  I would like to give it another shot first!) and we already had been collecting the ingredients.  I have a friend who has some pretty bad skin allergies.  It really touched my heart that she hadn't really been able to have the experience of funky colored/scented soaps because of it!  So, I made it my mission to keep my soap artificial dye and color free for her sake (so she can use some fun soap)!  I did a fair deal of research and decided to add cocoa powder to the recipe as both my dye and coloration.  To use this as a dye, it is recomended (as far as I my research told me online) that you heat your liquid oil up slightly with the cocoa in it to help the color take more evenly.  Most places also recommended that you filter the cocoa powder out to prevent a grainy scrubby feeling soap.  I knew that I didn't really want a dark brown soap for my first try, so I wasn't worried about filtering (plus, a little "scrub" in soap isn't normally a bad thing in my opinion).

The beginning stages of fixing the soap.

To make a long story short:  soap making is harder than I (or my silly book) gave it credit for.  I ended up with a giant mess that was completely separated after a few hours of sitting in it's mold.  Not only were we bummed, but we also had a giant mess on our hands at midnight.  Now, I guess I should mention here that we did this the night before the repeat house inspection for our rental.  It worked out so that we had a bit of time while straightening up that we hadn't planned for and we really needed a break/distraction from our inner mind workings.  As this project began to flounder, we started feeling the time pressure of fixing it quickly so we could get on with the things that had to be done before morning.  A word of advise folks:  unless you've done the project thousands of times (and even then something could always go wrong) I'd recommend making sure that you will have plenty of stress free time for it in case you make a mistake.  I have a couple of ideas personally of what went wrong, but I can't say anything for sure since it was my first ever batch from scratch.  (Another word for the wise here.  Wear a mask, a bandanna, something across your nose and mouth.  I can't stress this enough.  After spending an hour worrying I was going to die, I realized that I hadn't inhaled enough of the lye vapors by accident to really be dangerous.  No mater how careful you normally are, you're going to forget or get in a rush or just do something silly at some point.  My book did not stress this enough.  It actually barely mentioned it!)

Ready to pour repaired soap!

Now, back to the story!  I sat down at my computer to try and quickly figure out what had gone wrong!  Thank goodness I found Soap Queen's Amazing Soap Saving Tutorial!  With her help, I was able to take the "wounded" first batch and repair it into something usable.  I won't go into all the details (because I really want to encourage you to look at her site because it's awesome!), but her explanations were easy to follow and left me feeling more secure (and less bummed) about my first try.  Now, the original soap mess didn't really pull any of the scent of the cocoa powder like I had hoped.  Going through her tutorial, however, really brought out a lot of the fragrance and color!  While heating my soap up to reprocess it, my house smelt of baking brownies!  To be honest, I think this cheered me up more than anything at this point!  Once my soap had a cake batter ish look to it (well it smelt and looked like brownies so how would you describe it?) we began the (late) process of planning what to put it into.  Since the original recipe we were using didn't need to be poured at a high temperature, we had just planned on using some old Tupperware we have (and I mean five years old stuff) and just using it until it died to make a mold for cutting bar soap.  After our experiences thus far, we took Soap Queen serious when she said the mixture would be hot (even if it is deceivingly fluffy looking).

Cooling soap.  I was really tempted to put a CAUTION: Not Brownies sign on it.

We ended up using a glass casserole dish of mine that Mike ran under hot water before hand to try and reduce any risk of it cracking on us.  I knew that the shape of these first bars wouldn't be as pretty as I had originally wanted, but I was just excited that I would still have soap at the end of it all.  (For the record, from what I've read, as long as you wash your pans really well, (and multiple times) using them for cooking and soap making isn't harmful.  Just be careful and make sure you get things really clean!)  After 24 hours, the soap was hard enough to cut.  What was the first thing I tried?  I tried melting a small piece in the microwave to see if I could then pour it into a mold to get the "pretty shape".  It didn't work.  It keeps that fluffy texture and heats up quickly.  After that one attempt, I accepted that this was the shape my soap was going to be and cut it into bars.  After cutting the first few bars I realized how beautiful the soap actually was!  The chocolate smell isn't really strong in the finished product, but it gave it a natural swirl look.  I think I will purposely "ruin" this soap each time I make it (and by this soap I mean when I use cocoa like this if my friend likes it) to get this result.  Now, I will be getting a casserole dish I can dedicate to soap making only use as well!  (I really want a square one, but you make do with what you make do with.)  I've got it air drying out on a cookie sheet so I'm sure it will be mentioned in a future post again with the final results.  For now, look at how pretty it is now!

An over sized picture to show the pretty look of this soap!