Crispy Chicken Tenders

I'm always one for fried food, but sometimes you just need a simple alternative especially when you don't have a deep fryer at home. This recipe is from a book called "Cook Yourself Thin," which offers tasty substitutions for your favorite meals. While I'm not necessarily interested in the cook yourself "thin" part, I am interested in the cook yourself "healthy" part.

Also, I had a half-empty box of organic cornflakes that were soon-to-be stale if not used in a heavy-handed fashion.

So I decided to give this recipe a try.

The key part of this recipe was the buttermilk marinade, which make the chicken tender and very flavorful.

For the chicken marinade:
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup nonfat buttermilk

1. Combine all these ingredients in a large bowl. Place 1 pound of chicken tenders in the marinade and cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.



2. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with foil and spray with cooking oil. Set aside until chicken is ready.

3. Mash up 1.5 cups of cornflakes into medium crumbs for breading.



4. Drain the chicken from marinade. Pick up chicken tenders one by one and turn it in the cornflakes. Since I like extra crispy breading, I tended to smash as much cornflake breading as I could on to each chicken tender. Arrange on baking sheet.



5. Bake in 400 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes until the cornflakes are nicely toasted and chicken is cooked through.



* My only complaint about this recipe was that while top side of the chicken tender was nice and crispy the underside tended to be soggy after a while. To prevent this, one idea is to bake the chicken tenders on a rack. Another idea is to flip the tenders half way to make sure both sides are crispy.

If you try these ideas, please let me know how it turns out!