I loved trying the Biscuits and Gravy recipe recently, and you guys gave me such amazing feedback on it, all the different variations of it, I learned so much! So today I decided to give another classic American recipe a go – chicken and waffles!
There are loads of different variations of the recipe for the chicken breading, but I’ve decided to go for the one with hot sauce in. Like the biscuits and gravy where there were so many ways to make it, I’d love to know your own versions of the recipe, so make sure to comment on the video and tell me how you make it!
So what is chicken and waffles? From what I read, it’s a sort of fusion between Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine and soul food that’s a breakfast and dinner together sort of thing. In fact, apparently it was designed to be served in the early hours when musicians were finished with their sets!
It might be controversial but I’m using chicken thighs, boneless and skinless ones. I’ve seen recipes using all different parts of the chicken including wings and thighs with bones in, but I love chicken thighs so that’s what I’ve tried this time!
Let me know what you think of the recipe and if you have a different variation I could try!
Chicken & Waffles Recipe
Chop the chicken into strips then season with shimmy of salt and pepper.
Whisk together the eggs, hot sauce of your choice and the buttermilk in one bowl. In another one, mix together the flour, a good shake of salt and the garlic powder.
Now take a chicken strip and coat it in the flour mixture, then drop it into the buttermilk dredge. Finally whack it back into the flour so it’s all nicely coated. It’s best to keep one hand for the wet bowl and one for the dry here otherwise you’ll end up in a sticky mess. You can do just the one coat like this, or if you’re not happy and want more you can go back and forth for a nice coating. Place your coated chicken strip onto a wire rack. Now repeat with the rest of the chicken!
Next add all the hot sauce ingredients to a pan, you probably want to chop the butter up to help it melt more quickly. Stir them together until the sauce is nice and thick and looks delicious. This sauce is optional, but I like hot sauce, did I mention?
It’s waffle time! Separate the whites and the yolks of 2 eggs, reserve the yolks for later and whisk up the whites until you see those lovely peaks.
In another bowl, mix together the buttermilk, vanilla extract, egg yolks and oil. Then add in the baking powder, cinnamon and sugar and whisk up again. Then mix in the flour, use a spatula to get it to come together – it will be a bit thick, but now we work in the whisked up egg whites. This is your waffle batter!
Before you put it into the waffle iron, get your oil heating up to 190C for your chicken. You could probably air fry this, but I wanted to stay authentic for my first go! Now here’s where I made a mistake – make sure you drop your chicken directly into the oil rather than the basket as mine stuck! Remove from the oil when golden and crispy – it took about 7 to 8 minutes for me.
Warm your hot sauce back up again if it’s cooled down while you were doing everything else, then brush a little onto the crispy chicken.
Spray your waffle iron with oil then pour the batter from a jug in and cook until golden brown.
Finally time to serve up and enjoy with a drizzle of maple syrup, and an optional pickle if you want to give that a go!