Herby Chicken Strips with Homemade BBQ Sauce

Evening all 🙂 Just come in from doing some gardening. We bought some plants ages ago and have either been too busy or it’s been raining, so we haven’t got round to planting them until today! Planted a lot of fruit and veg, so hopefully soon I’ll be able to eat raspberries, redcurrants and strawberries etc that I’ve actually grown myself!

You may have also seen that I finished the name change. It’s now Annie’s Noms. I have a new button and my domain name is all set up. Exciting! Don’t worry, the old URL will still direct you here 🙂

So onto today’s yummy recipe 🙂

I don’t really eat red meat so we end up eating chicken a lot of the time. I find chicken is so versatile though, it never gets boring!

I decided to make chicken strips and my own honey barbecue sauce to dip them in. Went down a treat, definitely making these again! Yum yum 🙂

You will need:

> 2 Baking trays
> Food Processor/Mini Chopper

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Serves 2

For the homemade breadcrumbs (you can but them from the store, but I prefer homemade and it’s a great way to use up bread that’s a few days old). If the bread is too fresh to make into breadcrumbs straight off, then you can dry it out in the oven here’s how:

> 4 slices of bread
> Baking tray
> Food Processor/Mini Chopper

Method:

> Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C and place the slices of bread on the baking tray.
> Place the bread in the oven for 7 minutes.
> After 7 minutes turn the bread over and then leave for another 7 minutes so it’s evenly dried out on either side.
> Leave the bread to cool completely.
> Once cool, break the bread up and place it in the food processor/mini chopper. I couldn’t be bothered to get the food processor out as I didn’t really have enough bread to warrant it. The mini chopper is a brilliant invention for lazy people like me 🙂
> Give them a quick blitz and then put them in a bowl for later.

Now for the homemade BBQ sauce 🙂

Ingredients:

> 150ml ketchup
> 80ml cider vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
> 2 heaping tbsp of brown sugar
> 1 heaping tbsp honey
> A dash of hot sauce
> 2tsp paprika
> 1/2tsp salt
> Pepper to taste

Method:

> Place all the ingredients in a saucepan.
> Cook for about 5-7 minutes until thickened.
> Once it’s thickened up, place it in a ramekin or small bowl and leave to cool. The great thing about this sauce is you can make it in advance and then cover it with clingfilm and put it in the fridge 🙂

I like to leave the best until last, so (in my opinion anyway) here’s how to do the chicken 🙂

Serves 4

Ingredients:

> 2 chicken breasts
> 1/2 cup flour (I used wholemeal)
> 1 large egg, beaten (I used 2 as my eggs were small)
> 1/2tsp paprika
> 1/2tsp Italian seasoning
> 1/2tsp oregano
> salt and pepper
> cooking spray

Method:

> Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C and line 2 baking trays.
> Place the flour, egg and breadcrumbs in 3 separate shallow bowls. Season the breadcrumbs with the paprika, Italian seasoning, oregano, salt and pepper and ensure they are evenly mixed throughout the breadcrumbs.

> Cut your chicken breasts into fairly long strips.
> Individually, place strips of chicken in the flour, then the egg then the breadcrumb mix to give them a good coating.
> Place on the baking trays, with a little space between each one.
> Spray the chicken with the cooking spray then turn the chicken pieces over. Spray the other side of the chicken and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and has a nice crispy coating.

> Serve with the honey barbecue sauce. We served ours with potato wedges as well, my recipe can be found here.

> If you have any leftovers, (which we did as there’s only 2 of us!) you can place them in an airtight container and keep them in the fridge for a couple of days.
> They made a great lunch the next day with some salad 🙂