... would be gross. Fried chicken with a tapioca flour coating, however, is heavenly.
Wife kitteh is off on an extended road trip with one of our sons, driving from Seattle to Chicago and back. No, it doesn't make any sense to me, either, but there you have it. I'm using the time to experiment with some recipes. Last night, I made some fried chicken using tapioca flour and some with masa flour as the coating.
Like I said, fried chicken with tapioca flour was heavenly. Here's the seasoning mix for the flour.
- 1/2 cup tapioca flour
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp Slap Ya Mama
- 1/4 tsp garlic
- 1/4 tsp onion powder
- 1/4 tsp poultry seasoning
I did the same ratios for the masa flour mix. The chicken was soaked in buttermilk for about two hours ahead of time. I didn't use an egg wash or second coating. I was aiming for the lightest of crusts, crunchy, but without the greasiness.
Did I mention the chicken fried in the tapioca flour coating was heavenly? Here's what it looked like.
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| The flour mixtures, masa on the right. |
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| The thigh got the masa and the drumsticks got the tapioca flour. |
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| 10 minutes at 325-350 degrees kind of burned the masa flour coating, but left the tapioca coating utterly divine. As a matter of record, the masa wasn't really burned, it just deformed itself like that. It has a strong taste and overpowered the spices. It was good, but not great. I'd pick regular flour over masa. |
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| Bonus photo: I also made stewed okra with tomatoes from this recipe over at Southern Living. It's one of my favorite food photos ever. So colorful! |
H/T: A friend from junior high school that discovered me on Facebook recommended the tapioca flour. As near as I can tell, he worked for a while as a chef in New Orleans. His suggestions are always excellent as he's spent a lot of time experimenting with his cooking.
11 comments:
Would corn starch work similarly to tapioca flour? Corn starch is a lot easier to find in the store.
Tim, I was actually looking for corn flower, but couldn't find it. I haven't tried corn starch. You can get tapioca flour on Amazon, which is the way I'm going to do it from now on. My redneck ways don't go well with the whole organic food store vibe. While shopping yesterday, I wished I was wearing my Confederate Railroad shirt.
:-)
Also, I shop at Costco and the low-end supermarket right up the street. When I need Southern produce or meats, I go to Food 4 Less, our local po' folk store. It's too much of a hassle to visit the high end, hoity-toity places.
In Houghton, I don't actually think we *have* what you might consider a "high-end, hoity-toity" grocery. Oh, there is the Co-Op over in Hancock, but they actually aren't very expensive and they have just about as much floor space as an average ranch-style house. Of the 5 other grocery stores within about a 10-mile radius, they all sell basically the same standard things. Well, except for Festival Foods, which is 1/3 grocery store and 2/3 hardware store, but the "hardware" part doesn't help much with complicated recipes.
Amazon is your friend!
=="No, it doesn't make any sense to me, either, but there you have it"==
Sure it does. Who wants the bother of airports and airplanes and TSA security-theater?
*shudder* okra *shudder* I can *feel* the sliminess of pieces that big.
Ilion! I've missed you.
Actually, the reason for the road trip is grandma's birthday and our son's huge dog. Grandson wants to bring Huge Dog to meet Grandma at her birthday in Chicago.
As for the okra dish, it was delish!
My DSL modem died, and it took a week for the new one to get here (plus, I'm in an internet slump).
It's not the taste of okra that I don't like, it's the sliminess. When I was a kid, I grew okra in my garden because my mother liked it. Sliced up very small, and buried in a stew, it's ok. I also grew rhubarb for her. When I brought some of that in for her, I'd leave the house so I didn't have to smell it.
"High end" stores are for people (generally, white women) who need to spend money to feel like their lives have meaning.
Back when I was a kid, my mom grew some okra in the garden. But then, when it was ripe, she realized that she didn't have any recipes for how to use it. This was in Michigan, so none of the neighbors knew what to do with it either. And since this was several decades pre-internet, she didn't have a way to get a recipe. So, she just did the obvious thing and cooked the pods by boiling them a few minutes.
They looked, and felt, exactly like giant slugs.
Since then, I've had things like jambalaya, with okra just added as a thickening agent, and it was fine. But if all I'd ever had in my life was those "okra slugs", I'd never eat the stuff again either.
Thank you for sharing this delicious recipe. I absolutely Love fried chicken, and love this even more because it’s paleo! I will be making these again, for sure.
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