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!  

Experimenting with Gluten Free Cooking!

My finished product.  Gluten Free Home Made Hot Pockets...err...snack pacs!

Well, I love to cook (big surprise there, huh?).  Recently, I've gotten closer to some amazing people who have gluten free diets.  I really wanted to do something special for them, so I made them some snack packs (my version of hot pockets that I've been experimenting with lately).  I never realized all that would go into cooking gluten free!  So, in a way, this has become it's own little adventure.

My lovely supplies...although I ended up not using the egg.

My first thoughts were that I would only have to worry about the actual flour being gluten free.  I was wrong.  Gluten goes into so many different ingredients that I never would have guessed!  For this I focused on things that would go in a pizza hot pocket.  (I'll include my recipe for these a bit later in this post don't worry :) ) I do want to state now that I may have made some slight mistakes through this process and I apologize.  I dived in (like I always do) and took the challenge.  Thankfully I have been told that these friends (or at least one of them) are willing to be "test subjects" for these cooking experiments!  My first step was to go and look for the gluten free flour.  I went to my local grocery store and had a selection of three "flours".  There was all purpose, bread, and baked goods.  I did have a tough time trying to decide which flour would be best.  I ended up deciding on the all purpose flour since I thought if I had any left I could use it for other baking projects.  Just so everyone is prepared, I spent about $5.00 for a pound of gluten free flour.  It is more expensive than traditional flour,  but if it's what you need to enjoy baked goods, it's what you need!  Next I grabbed extra butter and some cheese.  I decided to go with the Italian blend instead of the pizza blend purely because they were constructed almost identical (the Italian blend had a few cheese types the pizza blend didn't) and the Italian blend was almost half the price.

Dry ingredients pre-mixing.

Yes...I do weigh price into my decisions.  The pepperoni was easy.  Just plain pepperoni.  The sauce was tricky.  I've never actually purchased pizza sauce I realized.  I didn't even know where to find it!  We almost picked up spaghetti sauce instead then Mike finally found a clerk and asked.  Now, while we were looking for the pizza sauce (and while we were looking over the spaghetti sauces to possibly get one of those instead) I noticed that some of them were marked gluten free.  When I found the pizza sauce, I looked but none of them were marked gluten free.  I ended up looking through the ingredients of each of them (thankfully it was a small section) and found one that had very basic ingredients (water, tomato paste, seasonings, ect).  It was the only one they had that didn't mention wheat or any gluten warning at all, so it was the one we got.  In the long run, I was just really surprised.  It never occurred to me that gluten is in so many products.  One of the other things that really surprised me was that gluten is in some baking powders, so make sure you check yours out!

The dry ingredients mixed with some cheese added in!

When we got home, I got myself started!  I added all my dry ingredients while taking small pinches to taste to try and tweak it.  Let me say it here.  In my opinion, the all purpose gluten free flour has a gross after taste.  I've been doing a little research at The Gluten Free Goddess's site and it sounds like I may have disliked the taste of the white rice flour.  Going forward, I plan on skipping out on that as much as possible (meaning I'm going to be experimenting with different types of gluten free flours to figure out my recipes).  I'd made a non-gluten free version of this dough using a recipe before.  I only changed the seasonings I mixed in as well as the type of cheese.  The flour said I could add it to all recipes cup for cup so I figured this would be easy!

My dough mound.

It didn't work like that.  I had to add extra butter (remember this was me experimenting) as well just play with the dough to get it to a somewhat dough consistency.  The all purpose mix I bought had a really gritty texture to it.  In the end (because the gluten in wheat is what makes dough flexible and I haven't had the experience with cooking this way to know how to compensate for it) I ended up with a mashed potato texture that I flattened for my dough.  Once I know more, I hope I can go back and make this a better recipe but I'll share what I have for now!  Oh, and be forewarned...baked goods using this type of flower don't seem to brown as much, so pay extra attention to the edges!

Before baking. 

Gluten Free Pizza Snack Packs

Ingredients:

For the Crust:
2 C. All Purpose Gluten Free flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. pizza seasoning
1 C. Italian cheese mix (or cheese mix of your choice)
1 C. butter (room temperature)
8 Tbs water

For the Filling:
Pizza Sauce
Cheese mix
Pepperonis

Instructions:
1. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and pizza seasoning.  I used a whisk to ensure it was evenly mixed together.
2. Add the cheese to your crust mixture and once again mix together.  I used my whisk, but used a folding action more than a stirring action to try and get it all spread out.
3. Add in the butter.  Use your hands to make a "crumb" mixture with the butter and the dried ingredients.  (The best way of describing this motion for me is to say that you squeeze the butter into the dried ingredients the say way you fold dough over into itself.)
4. Continue in the a fore mentioned mixing technique and add in your water.
5. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  (I hate having the oven going the entire time you're working on a difficult task only to waste electricity.  Feel free to preheat before if you would prefer.  My kitchen just gets hot fast.)
6.  Stick your dough in the freezer while you get your filling ingredients together.  (The goal here is to get the dough cool.  If you'd rather stick it in the fridge and watch a movie, go for it.  I just like to do the entire project in one swoop!)
7.  Take about a three inch ball of dough and flatten into a pancake shape.  You want the flattened product to be as even as you can make it, but as thin as you can make it too.  This will take some practice.  (And it feels like playing with mashed potatoes!)  Lay your finished "pancake" on your baking pan.
8.  Using about 1 TBS of pizza sauce, spread it over the "pancake" sparring a 1/2 inch edge around the circle.  Lightly sprinkle some cheese (just remember, that cheese is going to melt!) and then place your pepperonis.  I followed this by once again sprinkling cheese and adding about a 1 tsp. dollop of pizza sauce on top.
9.  Make another pancake the same way you made the first one.  Gently drape this dough over the top of your pizza filling and lightly press the edges for an informal seal.  Take a fork and press down the dough all around the edges (see above picture) to make a tight seal.  This is also the point where I would check for any breaks in the top crust and smooth small pieces of dough over them so that my filling wouldn't bake out.
10.  Repeat steps 7-9 until your cookie sheet is full of snack packs!
11.  Bake at 400 until the edges are lightly browned.  Move to a cooling rack to let cool.
12.  To store these in the freezer (and make them more like hot pockets) let them cool on the cooling rack then wrap them in freezer paper.  My wrapping method is to set the snack pack half way down my freezer paper piece and fold the bottom over it.  I then fold my sides in like a triangle to seal the sides of the pack.  Then gently flip and fold over until you only have a small piece.  I tape that down with plain desk tape and write what they are with a magic marker.  I suggest keeping them stored like this inside a gallon zip lock bag.  To reheat:  Cook in a microwave on high for 45 seconds.

Fresh out of the oven on the cooling rack.

I hope you all enjoy them!  I'm sure my next experiments will be even better!

More produce!

This is an older picture but look at how big it's all getting! 

I'm really done with this whole "being sick in summer" thing.  It stinks and it's keeping from being out in my garden as much!  (as well as from updating this). 

I really like to look back at a little more than a month ago you can see how far things have come!  The cucumbers were tiny for example!  Then if you look at a little less than a month ago you'll still see how fast they've grown.  I find it surprising and shocking.  It's nice that it grows fast!

An adorable baby cucumber.  I love how cute these are!

Even with me being sick (I caught what my hubby had over the fourth), things have still been crazy busy!  Just this last week (on days I was feeling somewhat good enough to go outside) I moved the sage and rosemary inside.  They are now sitting on my desk next to me.  The reason for moving the rosemary was that it never could seem to be happy in the garden.  At least in a pot I can monitor it a bit more closely and move it to accommodate it.   The reason for moving the sage was that we have discovered a HUGE June bug infestation!  They were devouring my sage plant and with the dill and cilantro next to it getting so big it was having a hard time recouping.  (The infestation isn't gone, but we are spraying plant leaves with a soap based organic spray to keep them from eating the plants.  We also put out a June bug trap (a jar with about 2 inches of oil inside with a solar light pointing in and surrounding it since they are drawn to the light and will then die in the oil) )  At first we thought we had slugs since all the research I had seen was pointing to that.  We put out our beer traps and tip toed outside with a flashlight in the middle of the night to catch the traps in action only to find no slugs but June bugs over everything!  Keeping our porch light off at night in the backyard also seems to make a huge difference.  Our mole/groundhog also finally did the evil unforgivable act and has tunneled into the garden.  As much as the traps appall me, I may let my husband put one in.  I don't want to kill whatever it is, but I also don't want it in my garden :(  I'm going to put up more of the pop bottles on poles (my husband was playing with them and didn't put them back in correctly or the same spots so I'm thinking this might be why the sudden "ohh garden" from the creature) and hope that it decides to go on it's merry little way!

My first harvest of green beans.

My garden is producing produce!  (see what I did there?)  I'm so excited!  I've always enjoyed cooking with fresh ingredients, but having my own grown veggies definitely rocks!  My first harvest was enough for my hubby and I to eat with two meals, my second filled a Wal-mart bag half way full (I ended up sharing with my friends down the street and gave them half) and my third has added even more to that.  I think I'm going to start freeze canning them (I sadly do not have a pressure cooker :(  to regularly can them yet) so that I don't run the risk of losing them!  They are really yummy! 

My first two zucchini and three cucumbers!

Even the zucchini and cucumbers are starting to come in now!  I'm extremely excited :)  We used the zucchini in this Rachel Ray recipe.  We first made it last year when it came out in the magazine and fell in love with it!  It's a very good recipe and I highly recommend it!  The cucumbers I'll be turning into cucumber sandwiches today.

My First Quilt.

I finally finished my quilt (in between being sick) and started my husbands.  To see more, visit my Crafting Blog: Something Crafty This Way Comes! 

Larping and Garden work :)

Yesterday we were out at Ford Lake all day running Kingdom of Valin: A New Dawn.  The Larp  It was alot of fun and we had a really good turn out!  See Pictures Here.  So today my husband and I just sat around and relaxed.  We visited his dad and then worked on the garden.  We added some pepper plants (jalepenos and bell) as well as some tomatoes.  We planted garlic seeds and watered it!  Lulu has more flowers!  I think we're up to about six flowers!  I'm really excited for my "crop" to come in!  We've decided that maybe we weren't watering our plants enough.  My husband watered them for a long time last night and today most of them have doubled in size.  I'll be planting pictures of it soon!  All in all, it was a great weekend, but I feel like it's gone by too fast.  Oh!  For the Larp I made some amazing cucumber sandwiches!  Here's the recipe/instructions:

Cucumber Sandwiches

• 2-4 cucumbers sliced thinly or cut into small chunks (this depends on how large your cucumbers are or how much of their flavor you wish to taste)
• 2 packages of cream cheese
• 1 package of ranch dressing seasoning 

1. Slice your cucumbers into thin slices.  I also like to slice them into strips after this as well.
2. Mix your cream cheese and ranch dressing packet with a mixer until smooth.  (I don't think the mixer is completely necessary but it makes things faster).
3. Mix the cucumber slices into the blended mix. 
4. Refridgerate (or keep cool) for a few hours.
5. Slather onto bread and serve!

My recipe does make quite a bit (It was enough to make sandwiches with two loaves of bread with the mixture spread very thinly) but it does keep really well and remains tasty.  People have requested it before :)  I hope this helps y'all!