Friday Florida Food Fest: BBQ Chicken, Chicken Tenders, and Chicken Dogs

The reason people say, "Try this, it tastes just like chicken" is because everything we eat IS chicken these days ... or at least it seems like it sometimes.

Chicken does seem like a gift with it's relatively healthiness (compared to other meats) and it's adaptability in the kitchen. It still boggles my mind when I look at restaurant menus and see how they take a fairly lean, low calorie meat like chicken and turn it into a mega calorie-high fat disaster on a plate.

I like the bird cooked without too much frufrunessity tossed into the recipe and please ... chicken and cheese were never meant to be together ... never. For any recipe that includes chicken and cheese, just add more cheese and drop the chicken, 'cause you ain't gonna taste the bird anyway. Why waste it?

(That was my colorful local dialect rant)



Last Sunday, feeling a bit nostalgic for the BBQ's of my Dad, Uncle Richard, and Mr. Buck, I barbecued a bunch of split chickens. When I was a kid, the three men mentioned above were the BBQ masters of our little corner of the world. We all lived next door to each other and our families put on some bodacious BBQ's.
Chicken was usually the star of these also ... not for health reasons back then, but because everybody loved it and those guys were raising a bunch of kids ... plus the relatives were coming, and chicken was a bargain.



Ya' gotta come hungry to a BBQ like that, because you're going to get a half a bird slapped on your plate and there was more on the grill if you were still hungry. It's messy, fun food and when I was finished with that plate last Sunday, I barely had room for the Key Lime pie that I had prepared before going out for a 3 hour stint at the BBQ grill.
Of course, I split firewood nearby while the chickens slowly cooked over oak coals so I was pretty hungry when it was all finally ready.


Last night's entree ... pretty fancy, don'cha think?

Like many men, I have a terrific weakness for fried chicken.
(Laura of Vitaminsea is smugly smiling somewhere)

In the traditional breaded form, fried chicken is loaded with extra fat and calories that I might need if I were going outside to plow 40 acres behind a mule.
That's not really the situation around here, so I limit my consumption of this culinary wonder.


One way around this problem is frying the chicken quick with no breading at all ... no skin either. These chicken tenders got a brief roll in some Cajun seasoning and then into a wok of hot peanut oil. They came out crispy and amazing.
Compared to traditional fried chicken, these have to be less fat with a much lower calorie count.

We dipped some in Texas Pete's Buffalo Wing Sauce and ate some as little poboys. It was all good.
I even made some potato chips in the wok just for fun. They came out great ... no pictures 'cause Junior ate them all.


Last, but not least in our Friday Florida Food discussion are chicken dogs ...









"Let's go dog surfing now, everybody's learning how ..."

When you think of chicken dogs, you might be visualizing pale, tubular sections of mystery chicken parts, but I'm talking about REAL chicken dogs ... like the one you see here.



If we had neighbors they would have thought I was insane yesterday evening as Feather and the two tame chicks did battle for a piece of bread on the front porch.
I could not stop laughing at their antics. It was all I could do to hold the camera still as the chickens alternately rode around on feather's back, climbed over her head to get to the bread, or flew up on to my shoulder like some kind of weird pirate parrot.

It was so wacky and there was no one around to see it but me.

If laughter is life extending, I gained a few extra minutes yesterday, thanks to a dog and some chickens.