Send to KindleTick tock, tick tock…that’s the clock ticking down to Sunday’s big game party. Are you ready? Have you been clearing room in your refrigerator for the dips? Have you loaded up your cart with large quantities of dipping implements (corn chips, potato chips and tortilla chips are standard)? Have you been stretching your stomach so that you can eat the enormous amounts of 7 layer dip, hamburgers, hot dogs, ribs, wings and nuts? More importantly, have you been prepping your liver?
<ducking as I say this> Bacon is soooooo last year. Seriously, when you find an ingredient shoved into every food out there, I think it’s time to declare that it has jumped the shark. Do we really want bacon in our cupcakes and booze? Really? I’m here to declare fried chicken skin as the successor to bacon. C’mon, just admit it. You might be all hoity toity about eating boneless skinless chicken breasts, but you know (deep down inside) all you really want to do is peel the skin off a freshly roasted chicken and devour it. The skin is what has all the flavor in a chicken.
Fried chicken skin has been slowly creeping onto restaurant menus for a little over a year now. Crispy chicken skin is adorning the tops of salads (world’s better than croutons), it’s being made into tacos and a chef in NY is wrapping it around gravy and deep frying it into a chicken skin gravy ball. There’s even a restaurant, here in LA, that has stopped making his blt with bacon and replaced it with crispy chicken skin. I made my first crispy chicken skin last year as a part of my chicken and waffles ice cream. If you haven’t made this yet…get on it. It’s really good.
The concept of popping pieces of fried chicken skin into your mouth really shouldn’t sound so weird, considering we’ve been throwing back fried pork skin forever.
There is, and there isn’t, a chicken skin recipe. You can fry the stuff in oil, in its own fat or oven fry it. I prefer to make my fried chicken skin like I make my bacon – I fry it in the oven (I also think this makes less mess).
I’ll actually post a chicken skin recipe, below, so that you can make these up for your next tailgating or white trash party. Just like potato chips, you can flavor your fried chicken skin with just about any seasonings. I flavored half of mine with sea salt (my favorite) and the other half with a barbecue dry rub. You could get fancy by using some herbs de Provence or garlic powder/salt. Pretty much any dry seasoning can be used on the skins to flavor them.
Relationship Advice
In a bit of surprising research, it appears that we women like to see our men in pain. Huh? Who knew that the guys have been right all this time (don’t they regularly accuse us of liking to see them suffer)?
Well, that’s not quite the case.
According to researchers, when a woman offers a man physical comfort in his time of need (no, not that need), the reward center in her brain lights up.
Using couples in good relationships, they hooked the guy up to a machine that would shock him and the woman was hooked up to an MRI. While the guy was being shocked, the woman was physically touching him. Not only did her brain register her rewarding feeling, the women also said they felt closer to their significant other.
There was also a group of women that were not touching their men while they were shocked. No surprise, these same regions of their brain showed no activity. They didn’t report if the women felt bad about watching their guy go through the pain of electrical shock, nor did they report if the women felt happy about it. They just didn’t show any rewarding feeling.
They also hooked up a group of women and men, didn’t shock the men but the women were still physically touching them. Again, their reward center didn’t register anything and they did not report that they felt any closer to their guy.
What’s to be learned from this study? If your guy is in a bad mood, had a rough day or isn’t feeling well, both of you would benefit from a little touch. Rub his back, give him a little massage or a nice big hug. Who knows, that might lead to something a little more exciting (no electrical shocking required).
Recipe: Super Bowl Snacks: Crispy Fried Chicken Skin
Ingredients
- Chicken Skin (cleaned of excess fat and any stray feather stuff)
- Sea Salt
- BBQ Dry Rub
Instructions
- Lay chicken skin between 2 layers of paper towels and roll up to remove as much moisture as possible.
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees Farenheit.
- Cover one rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Remove chicken from paper towels and lay out chicken skin as smooth as possible.
- Lightly sprinkle each piece of skin with some of the sea salt or bbq dry rub.
- Cover the skin with another sheet of parchment paper and lay another rimmed baking sheet on top.
- Weigh the whole thing down with a cast iron skillet and slide into the oven.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Check for doneness by lifting up top pan. Skin should be crisp. You may need additional 10 – 20 minutes depending on how thick the skin is that you use.
- Drain off the fat and lay out fried chicken skin on a paper towel lined dish.
Quick notes
You can use breast or thigh skin, it doesn’t matter. Once these are made, you can also crush them up and top salads or soups. It’s an addicting little snack.
Using a rimmed baking sheet is important because there is quite a bit of fat that will render out of the skin. If you use a regular baking sheet you run the risk of the fat dripping down onto the floor of your oven and making a real mess.
Preparation time: 5 minute(s)
Cooking time: 20 minute(s)
Diet tags: Gluten free
Number of servings (yield): 12
Culinary tradition: USA (General)
Can I just say that I love you? And as soon as I make these, so will my fam.
Awwww…thanks Charmaine. Be careful…these things are addicting and you can’t just eat one.
This is what you call game food…Powerful! Impressive! This can steal the limelight from the game itself. This recipe is a winner. Thanks for sharing! Have a great weekend party!
Chicken skin is seriously the best stuff ever. The problem is that there’s only a little skin per piece of meat. Have you found it sold in grocery stores just by itself?
Hi Val,
You could get it in bulk if you call up a local butcher. They should have quite a bit from all the skinless stuff people usually want. I had a lot of it because I made some of those dehydrated chicken treats for my dog. So the skin was used for this recipe and I used the bones to make a bunch of stock.
I love chicken (or turkey) skin. I always peel it off and eat it before I devour the chicken itself. Can’t believe I’ve never heard of this before and I CANNOT wait to try it… maybe this weekend. YUM! (And hey, don’t bad mouth bacon cupcakes, I just made some. ;-D) Go Patriots!
These look deliciously dangerous!
Great idea. Something new. Sick of the last 500 nacho recipes all over the place. Good job! Go Giants, by the way. (Just because my Jets will never make it.)
These would probably make some seriously delicious nachos.
Positively evil (and awesome) snacks! GO PATS!