Flash Fried Finger Lickin' Chicken

So, I made this for 4th of July and it was a big hit. Even a genuine southerner thought it was great.

The secret is flash frying in grapeseed oil, which is something I've never done before. The reason you use grapeseed oil is because it has a high smoke point, which means you can really heat it up before it starts burning, as opposed to other oils. All you are doing is dipping it in the oil real quick (30 seconds to 1 minute) and browning the crust.

I didn't have a way of measuring whether the oil made it to 400°, which was Rocco's recommendation, so my first piece of fried chicken as a complete disaster. It came out totally charred and made the house smokey. So, I turned it down, and tried the next piece. That was a failure as well, because it was still to hot, but not as hot as last time, but hot enough to melt the ends of the plastic tongs I was using to put the chicken in the oil. By my third attempt, I got my game down and the rest were a success.

I did tweak the recipe a bit. Because grapeseed oil is so expensive, I only bought half the amount that was in the recipe and I used chicken breast instead of chicken thigh. Basically, I made healthy chicken fingers. And it came great, a definite keeper.

Normal fried chicken is around 550 calories, while this recipe is around 200.

One final tip, I found that a lot of these recipes have one or two hard to find/expensive ingredients. I highly suggest find a Trader Joe's around you and shopping there. TJ's seems to have the obscure ingredients at really good prices. I found a bottle of grapeseed oil there for $3.99.