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fried chicken tenders on a blue plate

Homemade Chicken Fingers

Sheila
Easy and Delicious chicken fingers are the perfect picnic food!
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Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Course dinner, lunch, Main Course
Cuisine American
Servings 6 servings
Calories 769 kcal

Equipment

Ingredients
  

  • 3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • 2 cups buttermilk
  • 4 tsp Lawry's Season Salt
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose Flour
  • 1 tsp fresh ground pepper
  • 3 cups vegetable oil for frying should be an inch of oil in your pan

Instructions
 

  • Trim off excess fat, and grizzle from the chicken breasts and cut each into 4 strips.
  • Place chicken strips in a glass or plastic bowl toss with 1 teaspoon of season salt, pour buttermilk over chicken cover and let marinate for at least 2 hours or up to 24 hours.
  • Add flour, season salt and pepper to a shallow dish and combine. Set aside.
  • If you have a cast iron skillet this works the best if not any large frying pan or dutch oven will do. (actually an electric frying pan works the best) Pour 1 inch vegetable oil into the pan, turn heat on medium. If you have a thermometer you want the temperature of the oil to be between 360-375 before you start frying. Or you can use the flour test as demonstrated in blog post.
  • Dredge chicken in seasoned flour, making sure every part of chicken strip is covered with flour. When oil is at the correct temperature carefully lay the strips in the oil, being careful not to over crowd the pan. Let chicken strips fry for 3-4 minutes, take tongs and turn chicken allow to fry another 3-4 minutes. Chicken should be golden brown.
    If you have a cooking thermometer the chicken strips should have a 165° internal temperature.

Notes

  1. If the chicken is cold it will bring the temperature of the oil down, so you may need to adjust the dial on your stove top to bring the oil temp back up after adding chicken to the pan.
2. Once you have cooked chicken strips on both sides, remove from pan with tongs to a baking sheet lined with paper towels or to a wire rack placed over baking sheet.
Bone in Chicken: I use the exact same method when I want to fry bone in chicken. The only difference is you will want to cook the chicken longer on each side approximately 8-10 minutes depending on the size of the chicken piece. I would also suggest covering the chicken, but check often to make sure temp is staying consistent, you don't want to burn the chicken. Also, I like to turn the oven on to 250 degrees and place the cooked pieces of chicken on a wire rack sitting on a baking sheet into the oven this allows them to stay warm while you are cooking the remaining pieces of chicken and it keeps them crispy. Also when doing bone in chicken please leave the skin on, it is fried chicken after all! Who's counting calories when eating fried chicky dinner??!!

Nutrition

Serving: 4chicken stripsCalories: 769kcalCarbohydrates: 28gProtein: 54gFat: 9gSaturated Fat: 40gPolyunsaturated Fat: 11gMonounsaturated Fat: 26gTrans Fat: 0.03gCholesterol: 154mgSodium: 1361mgPotassium: 981mgFiber: 1gSugar: 4gVitamin A: 200IUVitamin C: 3mgCalcium: 108mgIron: 2mg
Keyword buttermilk, chicken, fried, lawrys season salt
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