Cracker Crumb Chicken

Have you ever noticed that it’s difficult to read tone in emails?  Really, go look at some emails.  Unless they’re riddled with emoticons and exclamation points, you will see that it is REALLY difficult to discern tone in emails.  One of my friends was telling me about a professor who would put smiley faces in all of his emails so that they would sound nice.

I thought this was sort of silly until I encountered the uncertain-tone-email and immediately was wishing for ANYTHING that would let me know that my professor wasn’t pissed off and subsequently making a voodoo doll of me and dropping my grade by eighty seven letter grades.

I’m going to just ply all of my not serious emails with emoticons from now on so that people don’t read too much into what I write.  A little winky face action there.  A little 😀 here.  A smattering of “lol”.

Of course, in reality I can’t do any of this.  Only over educated law professors with things like Harvard and University of Chicago in their resume can put emoticons in actual academic emails without people questioning their intelligence and sanity.  Also, I would never use winky faces.  Ever.  For a short time in college it suddenly became a thing for guys to use them in texts to flirt.  Maybe that’s still a thing.  I don’t know.  I clearly haven’t flirted via text in a while.  But the point is, winky face is never okay.

Okay.  Since THAT rant is over, let’s talk about this chicken.  It’s a family recipe that immediately makes me think of family parties.  One family party, actually.  The only time my mom makes this is for my brother’s birthday party, which of course leads to me being salty for 24 years now that he gets this and all I get is Brown’s chicken.  I’ve been given many excuses over the years, the main one being BROWN’S CHICKEN IS TRADITION FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY, LIZ.

Yes, yes it is.  And my brother clearly got the better tradition.

Anyhoo, I adore this chicken.  It’s doused in melted butter which pretty much ups the odds of it being good to near certainty.  Nothing doused in butter is bad.  Nothing.  I’d eat a bar of soap doused in butter.  Before the butter, though, there’s some pretty jazzy things happening.  The chicken goes in the basic egg wash and then is dredged in a coating made up of butter crackers and corn flakes.  What you end up with is the juiciest, crunchiest, BUTTERIEST chicken.

Yummers.

Cracker Crumb Chicken

Ingredients:

8 boneless chicken breasts

2 eggs, whisked

2 cups crushed butter crackers

1 cup crushed corn flakes

4 tbsp butter, melted

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare a baking sheet for the oven.

Whisk the eggs in a shallow bowl.  In another shallow bowl combine the butter crackers and corn flakes.  With the dredging-coating-station set up, take your chicken breasts and dip them in the egg mixture first and then dredge them in the cracker mixture.  Repeat with the rest of the chicken breasts.

When all the chicken breasts are ready on the baking sheet, pour the melted butter directly on the chicken breasts.  Don’t skimp on the butter here –  it really adds flavor!

Cook for 25-30 minutes, until cooked through.