I really love any sort of feedback I get from my blogs. I see stat numbers but I don't really get a sense of people's reception unless I get comments or responses. So when my friend Caroline tweeted me a suggestion, I was really excited. She said that if Belgium and the USA play each other, I should do chicken and waffles. I was already planning waffles for Belgium, but I noticed the USA played the same day. It was an awesome idea and I was totally down. So here's the step by step of how I had a totally paleo friendly chicken and waffle breakfast.
Step 1 was definitely getting my chickens all coated. The best paleo flour replacement is tapioca flour. I'd already used it in a few other recipes and I knew that it would make the best crust for the chicken. This is loosely based off of the Nom Nom Paleo Food 4 Humans chicken nugget recipe. The main variation is that she brines the chicken overnight to give it flavor. I really prefer putting seasoning directly in the flour. I feel like this gives the most flavor.
I used almond milk as the binder. My chickens got a nicely milky bath and then rolled around in the tapioca flour until they would good and covered. This had the negative side of effect of being ridiculously messy.
The chickens were now ready for some good new fashioned frying. Paleo forbids canola oil and frankly that stuff is really bad for you. However, you need an oil that has a high heat otherwise it will burn. The two best options are avocado oil and ghee. Avocado oil is awesome and Costco sells a giant bottle of it for about $10. I happened to be out though so I opted for ghee. Ghee is clarified butter. Basically, it's grass fed butter that has had the milk fats removed. In normal butter, the fat burns really easily and (as I've learned from experience) will cause your chicken to burn really easily. You won't get that with ghee or avocado oil so they're awesome for frying.
Once the chickens looked ready, I let them sit on some paper towels for a while so some of the grease could be absorbed. I probably cooked my chicken way longer than I needed to. Because of the coating, it's hard to tell if they're done. Raw chicken is really not ok so I definitely let them sit in the frying pan for a while. I don't think they tasted overcooked at all and I was happy to eliminate my risk of salmonella.
I seriously love tapioca flour for paleo baking. It's not perfect and there are definitely times when almond or coconut flour work better but it's great to have around. Trust me, I'm stocked up. I've seen it around in stores more and more frequently but this sucker came from Amazon. I get a lot of my paleo dry goods there.
And trust me - there are a lot of paleo dry good to stock up on. I'm never without a variety of grain free flours and just about every kind of nut you can think of.
Next up were the waffles! My friend Shannon had made these Paleomg chocolate waffles for Easter last year so I looked up the recipe as well. I thought that it wouldn't make a lot of waffles and my boyfriend is a big eater so I decided to double the recipe. I figured that if we had leftovers I could bring them to work for breakfast.
I remembered that Shannon said they were a little dry and she put extra something in them to remedy that. I figured she must have meant milk so I used a whole can of coconut milk instead of the 2/3 called for. I also put in a cup of almond milk. The almond milk helped a lot but it wasn't quite right for the waffles. I think adding more liquid was the key but putting more coconut milk would have been a better solution. Even with that, the waffles were still a little dry and definitely soak up syrup.
After I was done waffling, we had a ton of them. I've been eating waffles for three days now and there are still two in the fridge. I'm going to be waffled out soon!
Breakfast was pretty amazing though! I don't eat a lot of carbs so while I usually have a plate full of food, it ends up being 1/3 meat and 2/3 veggies. This was waayyyy more filling than that. I only actually ate half of the above and even after a 3 mile run, I was not hungry.
For an extra touch of Belgium, I also found this gluten free Belgium lager at Whole Foods. The label proclaimed that it was grain free, gluten free, soy free, and a million other things. I'm honestly not really sure what was left for it to be made of. I'm guessing it was made quite a bit like a cider though. It tasted like a mix between a lager and pear cider so it was probably cider plus hops. I liked it but probably wouldn't buy it again.
Then it was time to get ready and head out to watch the USA game. I was really happy about my patriotic sweater so I told Dan to take a bunch of pictures of me. Google turned them into a gif which was pretty awesome and creepy at the same time. The Googles are becoming pretty self aware and it's frightening.
Before we left though, we had a ton of fun getting silly kitty pictures. Cats are so ridiculous.
We had a really fun time watching the USA game even if it didn't end quite the way we wanted to. A friend organized a viewing party so at least we had great company and it was close enough that we walked home. I kept wanting to stop in bars on the way back but Dan talked some sense into me... until we passed the Folsom Street Foundry. It's an event space / bar near our apartment that's never open... and it was open so we stopped in for a drink...
And saw the best wine menu ever. I mean, it would be better if there was more selection but I was tipsy and it was in the shape of a wine glass so I was incredibly amused.
Sunday was a super fun day for us both in and out of the kitchen. Hopefully I go camera crazy a little more often so you can have more picture posts!
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