Put that in your oven and roast it: Chicken at Brainfood

As any Brainfood student (past or present) will tell you, there's always excitement in the air on the first Day We Cook Chicken. I personally think we have a very strong, well-edited lineup for the first third of the program where we focus on baking, grains, and vegetables. Slowly simmered collard greens with chunks of smoked turkey, gooey whole wheat brownies, and a hearty spinach mushroom lasagna, what's not to love? Maybe these recipes aren't what students think of as traditional sources of protein, but still satisfying and filling nonetheless. But I digress...

For whatever reason, the DWCC has a certain perennial appeal. Like the first day of knife skills, the DWCC is an exciting step up, a jaunty new feather for students to add to their culinary caps. Also, cooking chicken is a higher stakes venture. Avoiding drying out chicken breasts, knowing when chicken is fully cooked, and avoiding cross-contamination are common pitfalls that might cause any novice cook a moment of uncertainty in the kitchen--which makes a tasty, well cooked chicken dish even more of a success worth celebrating. And of course, the DWCC provides a drool-inducing preview of future classes (beef, turkey, seafood!).

This year, the inaugural DWCC fell a week prior to another inaugural event, and students who braved the blustery cold weather got a treat: 2 of our favorite time-tested chicken recipes plus a whole roasted chicken. For our Oven Baked Chicken, students took a page out of the shake-n-bake playbook and coated seasoned chicken breast pieces in a fat free mayonnaise, followed by a quick shake in crushed up crispy rice cereal. For the Fake Flake Fried Chicken, cornflakes took center stage as students diligently dredged de-skinned chicken legs in flour, egg, and cornflake crumbs. The logic behind our cereal-heavy chicken recipes? Baking chicken that has a crushed up cereal coating mimics the crunch of fried chicken without the excess baggage (literally) of high fat and cholesterol. The initial sad puppy eyes and pronounced sighs of disappointment---we're not frying it?!?!---eventually gave way to excitement as students realized that the "healthy alternative" looked surprising like the real deal. They dubbed the bite-sized shaped Oven Baked Chicken, "popcorn chicken". They commented on the tantalizing chicken-y fragrance that began to perfume the kitchen. They snuck longing glances toward the oven, until shooed away to do dishes.

By the time our chicken was ready, students had long forgotten the cold "sliminess" of handling raw chicken breasts, the slippery task of de-skinning chicken legs, and the dubious looking packet of innards that had to be fished out of the chicken's hollow center. The raw lumps of muscle had been transformed into familiar, appetizing foods, and that's no small feat. As usual, our Brainfood alternatives to fried chicken were huge hits. The crunchy coating had just a pinch of smoked paprika and cayenne to give the chicken a zip of flavor. The traditional herb roasted chicken, ever the classic, once again proved that there's something ceremonious about carving a roast at the table that turns any day into a special occasion.