Fried Chicken 'n Biscuits

I went to the library on Friday and checked out Roben Ryberg's You Won't Believe It's Gluten-Free. What is truly unique about her book is she gives the same recipe a few different ways using the different flour. So there are multiple recipes for breads that are rice, potato, corn or oat based. These recipes all emphasize the chosen flour so unlike the other cookbooks I'm reading, there is only the need to have one or two special flours - not five or six! A welcome change for my small pantry! She includes recipes for fried chicken. I have not had fried chicken in over a year. Although at some fast food chicken restaurants, I could have a certain variety of chicken that was not made with milk, my choice of sides were extremely minimal and I could never have the biscuit. Growing up, I would eat more than my fair share of biscuits when my mom brought home KFC or Popeye's for dinner! I'm not sure what I loved more - the crispy flour texture surrounding the chicken or the melt-in-you-mouth biscuit.

I set out to make my own fried chicken. I have never fried anything before; I am much more of an oven-baked kind of cook. My small kitchen lacks a deep fryer so I used the last of my cheap cooking oil in one of my pans. I used Roben's recipe for corn-based fried chicken ("special" ingredients are cornstarch and xanthan gum) and used eggs with water for my dredging liquid. Making the fried chicken was fairly easy but a bit messy. In hindsight, I would have cut my chicken pieces smaller and cook them for a few minutes less, but overall, an easy dish to repeat.

For the biscuits, I used her rice-based recipe, substituting rice milk for rice. The result was a very softy and delicious biscuit. It lacks the height of my favorite fast food biscuits, but it was still tasty!

After dinner, I began reading another one of my library books: How to Read a French Fry and Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science by Russ Parsons. I wish I began reading it sooner! The very first chapter is all about the science behind frying, which leads to extremely helpful tips on frying because when you know the why behind cooking, it is much easier to do.