Author: petebakes

there’s no shortage of fried chicken joints where i live, but my favorite kind will always be homemade. since the first time we had “corn flakes chicken,” i’ve been searching for new and interesting ways to fry delicious things. after trials with several different cereals (cap’n crunch, no crunchberries, thank you, and frosted mini chex – too sweet), i’ve settled on honey bunches of oats. it’s got the perfect amount of crunch, a good sweetness, and it tastes great cold when you’re looking for something to gobble down at 2 am.

the assembly line: breading and frying chicken can be an extremely messy task, and my one piece of advice is to constantly clean your workstation and keep your hands clean and dry. the worst thing you can do is get globs of egg and flour in the cereal breading. trust me, taking your time here can make a world of difference once you’re ready to start frying.

the key to flouring your chicken is to keep the coating very light. pat off any excess flour so there’s a thin even coating. if the flour layer is too thick, dipping it into the egg will get you clumps of egg-flour glue that will drip right of the chicken, putting you back where you started. keeping both the flour and egg layers thin ensures you get a strong glue to help the coating stick close to the chicken and stay on during the frying process.

can you find the chicken in this picture? here’s the giant tub of cereal i used to bread the chicken. since the flakes are a little large,  i dumped a bunch in a tupperware container and crushed it with my bare hands. i suppose you could also quickly pulse it in the food processor or pour some into a ziploc bag and crush it with a rolling pin but i like getting my hands in there. see all those tiny crumbs of cereal goodness? make sure you use them – the goal is to get each piece of chicken completely covered, and those tiny crumbs can fill in the gaps between the giant bunches and oats.

here’s a quick reminder that i’m also making macaroni n’ cheese. did you forget? this will also have breading on it. i can’t wait.

and now back to the chicken, post-fry. there are few sights as beautiful. i almost don’t want to ruin it by, you know, eating it. alas, i must. for blog purposes, you see. to backtrack a bit, i fried up the chicken in vegetable oil, although you can use your fat of choice – if you’re a purist, maybe a tub of crisco is the way to go. for some reason though, crisco just weirds me out.

i mean, just look at this chicken. if you start seeing honey bunches of oats chicken on the menus of fancy restaurants soon, don’t freak out. embrace it.

most weekdays, i skip breakfast. it’s bad, i know, but the best i usually do is a bowl of honey bunches of oats at my desk. on weekends though, i crave giant hearty breakfasts. i want pancakes and omelets and bacon and muffins – like the “complete breakfast” you’d see at the end of a cereal commercial, where we’re expected to have a glass of orange juice and a glass of milk. above is my go-to breakfast for sunday morning, with a fresh mug of coffee (i’ve converted from instant to brewed!). eggs, sunny-side up, italian sausage, asparagus sauteed in butter and whole wheat toast – there’s nothing better. plus, it makes me feel like a line-order cook, if only for the 15 minutes it talkes to pull everything together –  it’s a fun game to see if i can it all ready at the same time so it’s still hot when i eat.

if you ignore the fact that i completely overcooked the eggs, this was an incredible meal. until recently, i never knew what to call sunny-side up eggs, because growing up we just called them “dippy eggs” (because you poke the yolk and dip the bread into it). and asparagus for breakfast? i’ve always loved it, but i was skeptical of the “asparagus and eggs with parmesan” craze until i tried it myself. there was actually another entire plate of asparagus that i wolfed down. that’s right, i ate an entire bushel of asparagus for breakfast. and it was worth it. what’s your favorite breakfast for a lazy weekend?