By Turned fifty-four on Wednesday. March 30, except this week started March 14 so the birthday is actually next week's territory, but I'm thinking about it now because birthdays start haunting you a week early when you're past fifty. Fifty-four is not a remarkable number. It's not fifty, which felt like a wall, and it's not fifty-five, which sounds like it should come with a discount at Denny's. It's just fifty-four — a number that means I've been alive for fifty-four years and working for thirty-six of them and now I'm not working and the math doesn't add up to anything I recognize.
Made fried chicken Monday. Not Betty's fried chicken — I'm not ready for Betty's fried chicken, that's a mountain I'm still climbing — but my version, which is close enough to honor the source and far enough to be honest about the gap. Buttermilk soak overnight, then dredged in seasoned flour — salt, pepper, garlic powder, a little paprika, a pinch of cayenne that Betty would not approve of because Betty's fried chicken has five ingredients and paprika isn't one of them. Fried in a deep skillet with an inch and a half of vegetable oil, which is wrong because Betty used lard, but Connie has opinions about lard that I have learned not to challenge.
The chicken was good. Not Betty's. But good. The crust was crisp and the meat was juicy and I ate three pieces standing at the counter and thought about Betty's hands — small hands, strong hands, hands that could wring a chicken's neck and bake a birthday cake with the same fingers on the same afternoon. My hands are big and rough and scarred from thirty-six years of labor and they can frame a house and operate a continuous miner but they cannot make fried chicken as good as a woman who weighed a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. There's a lesson in that about what hands are really for.
Connie brought home a cake from Kroger on Thursday. Chocolate, with white icing that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY CRAIG in letters that were slightly too large, like the bakery employee was shouting. I blew out candles that were shaped like a 5 and a 4 and wished for my back to heal, which is a wish I've made every birthday since fifty and which continues to go ungranted. We ate cake on the couch and watched Jeopardy and I got three questions right and Connie got seven and that's marriage.
I’m not ready to write down Betty’s fried chicken recipe, because I don’t have it and probably never will — some things live in hands, not in instructions. But standing at that counter eating three pieces and thinking about the gap between what I made and what she made, I started thinking about what I actually can put on paper: something with a real crust, something honest about what it is, something that doesn’t pretend to be a hundred years of muscle memory. These pretzel-crusted chicken nuggets are that. They’re not Betty’s. But they’re good, and on a birthday week when the math doesn’t add up to anything familiar, good is enough.
Pretzel-Crusted Chicken Nuggets
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 22 min | Total Time: 37 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
- 2 cups small pretzels, finely crushed (about 1 1/2 cups crumbs)
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
- Cooking spray
Instructions
- Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and coat generously with cooking spray.
- Crush the pretzels. Seal pretzels in a zip-top bag and roll with a rolling pin, or pulse in a food processor, until you have fine, even crumbs. Transfer to a shallow dish and stir in garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, pepper, and cayenne if using.
- Set up your dredging station. Place flour in a second shallow dish. Beat eggs with water in a third shallow dish. Arrange flour — egg wash — pretzel crumbs in a line.
- Coat the chicken. Working a few pieces at a time, dredge chicken in flour and shake off the excess. Dip in egg wash, letting the excess drip off. Press firmly into the pretzel crumbs on all sides until well coated. Place on the prepared baking sheet in a single layer.
- Spray and bake. Mist the tops of the nuggets lightly with cooking spray — this is what gets the crust to brown instead of just dry out. Bake for 10 minutes, flip each piece carefully, spray the new tops, and bake another 10–12 minutes until deep golden and cooked through (internal temperature 165°F).
- Rest and serve. Let sit on the pan for 3 minutes before serving. The crust will firm up slightly as it cools. Serve with honey mustard, ranch, or hot sauce, or eat three pieces standing at the counter, which is also a valid approach.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 375 | Protein: 39g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 34g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 610mg