Crispy Curry Chicken

I like curry, it is one of my favorite spices and I am always trying to find new and interesting ways to use it.  Sadly, outside of curry chicken and rice and curry stir-fry, most recipes call for a slow-cooker or ingredients that aren't readily available or within my single person budget.  In the past I had made chicken tenders with curry in the panko, but I knew there had to be a way to make that dinner a little bit more grown up.  So I did what any modern cook does to find a new recipe - I googled it.  There were quite a few recipes for basic crispy chicken with curry flavors but one stood out at AllRecipies.  It called for chicken to be marinated in a curry yogurt sauce and then breaded and fried in butter.  Sounded good but it seemed so heavy and I knew if there was a way to lighten it up I could find it.

As always I start pulling my ingredients together.  I have low fat plain yogurt, spices and chicken ready to go so I start mixing my yogurt sauce together.  The yogurt sauce turns a nice yellow color with the curry and once it is all mixed I remove a small amount to use as a dip and place the chicken in the remaining mixture.  I cover the bowl and into the fridge it goes to marinate overnight.

The next evening I'm excited to start cooking.  It has been a long day and there really isn't anything better then ready to cook dinner.  I pull out my yogurt bowl and get the panko ready.  Some more curry and black pepper are mixed into the panko and I'm ready to go.

As I pull the chicken out to dredge in the panko I'm struck by how thick the yogurt coating is.  It is really thick and I'm worried that the panko will pull right off once in the pan, but I keep going - I didn't have a plan B for dinner tonight.  I dredge each piece and the coating stays on so I put my worry out of my mind.  Once all my chicken pieces are coated I place them into my hot cast iron pan.

So far so good.  I flip the chicken and most of the breading stays on so I'm confident that all will go as planned.  I may have been a little heavy handed when pouring the oil, but I will drain each piece before serving it up.  In my defense, my cast iron pan is not seasoned enough yet and the oil so far has kept the breading from sticking to the pan.

While the chicken is sizzling away I decide to whip up some spicy honey mustard sauce.  I have the reserved yogurt sauce, but it might be nice to have a different flavor to try along with the curry yogurt.  You can find my spicy honey mustard in my Game Day Post.   I have my plate all ready to go with a salad and dipping sauces so all I'm waiting for is the chicken to finish.

Time to eat!  I am happy with the flavors of my dish, but will change a few things next time.  I think I will do a quick crisp in the pan and finish the cooking in the oven.  Probably will cut down on the greasy-ness of the chicken.  Also, I will add green onion to the yogurt dipping sauce, it ended up being somewhat sour.  Otherwise, the dinner was good.  I'll make it again and experiment a bit with the spices and cooking process.

Crispy Curry Chicken

• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 tsp curry powder
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 lb chicken strips
• Panko bread crumbs
• Black pepper to taste
• Curry powder to taste
• Olive oil

1. Mix first 5 ingredients and reserve some for dipping sauce.  Add chicken and coat thoroughly.  Cover and marinate overnight.
2. Mix Panko, pepper and curry and dredge chicken in mixture.
3. Heat olive oil in oven safe skillet.  Brown chicken strips on both sides and bake at 375 until done.  Remove, drain if necessary and serve with salad or rice and dipping sauce.