Tex-Mex Chicken Strips — The Kid-Friendly Sunday

Aunt Patty’s twins, Hannah and Hayden, came to Nashville with Aunt Patty for a long weekend college visit. They’re sixteen years old now and starting to think seriously about colleges — junior year is around the corner, the SAT is coming, the conversations about where to apply have started in earnest at the McAlester dinner table — and Patty had wanted them to see a real college campus in real operation before junior year so they could get a sense of what the next stage looked like in practice instead of in brochures. They drove up Thursday night and stayed at a Hampton Inn ten minutes from campus.

I gave them the freshman tour Friday afternoon. We walked the quad, ate lunch in the dining hall, sat in the front row of the freshman library tour, and ended at the campus bookstore where Hannah picked out a Vanderbilt sweatshirt and Hayden picked out a coffee mug shaped like a football helmet. Saturday morning they sat in the back of my American history survey, which was a lecture on Reconstruction by a professor who is famous on campus for his lecture style and who, when I told him afterward that my cousins were visiting from Oklahoma, walked over and shook both their hands and asked them what they were thinking of studying. Hannah said journalism. Hayden said engineering. The professor told both of them they’d be welcome at Vanderbilt. They left the lecture beaming.

Sunday I cooked for them in the second-floor dorm kitchen because Patty had specifically requested I cook them a meal — she wanted the twins to see what college Sunday cooking looked like in my hands. I made Tex-Mex chicken strips because Hannah and Hayden are picky eaters in the way most teenagers are picky — sixteen years of mid-Oklahoma cooking has not adventured their palates beyond meat-and-potatoes-and-carbs — and I wanted them to leave Nashville thinking the food I was cooking was as good as Mama’s. The dish needed to be familiar enough to clear the picky bar and elegant enough to clear the cooking-as-craft bar. Tex-Mex chicken strips with three dipping sauces hits both.

The technique: chicken tenders (a pound and a half from the IGA-equivalent grocery near campus, the long thin tenderloin pieces from the breast that’s already been cut into uniform strips by the butcher), patted bone-dry on paper towels, salted on both sides. The dredge: a cup of all-purpose flour mixed with a half-cup of fine cornmeal, two teaspoons of cumin, two teaspoons of smoked paprika, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon of chili powder, a half-teaspoon of cayenne for the heat, salt, and black pepper. The cornmeal in the dredge is the move that makes the crust shatter-crispy in the oven the way pure-flour dredges don’t.

The technique: each tender goes through flour-egg-flour (the double-flour helps the cornmeal-flour mix stick), then onto a wire rack set over a sheet pan, sprayed with cooking spray on both sides. Bake at four-twenty-five degrees for twenty minutes, flipping at the ten-minute mark, until the crust is deep golden and the strips are cooked through to one-sixty-five at the meat thermometer in the thickest part of the thickest tender.

The three dipping sauces are what take the dish from kids-meal to actual cooking. Sauce one: chipotle ranch — a half-cup of buttermilk ranch dressing whisked with a tablespoon of pureéd chipotle in adobo and a teaspoon of lime juice. Sauce two: honey-lime crema — a half-cup of full-fat sour cream whisked with two tablespoons of honey, the juice of one lime, and a pinch of salt. Sauce three: smoky tomato salsa — a small can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes drained, blended quickly with a clove of garlic, a tablespoon of fresh cilantro, the juice of half a lime, salt, and a pinch of cumin. Three small bowls on the table with three different colors and three different flavor angles.

Hannah ate eight strips. Hayden ate eleven. They both pulled out their phones at the table and texted Mama photos of the spread to tell her my cooking was “fancier than they’d expected,” which was the kind of compliment that lands true precisely because the twins didn’t mean it as one — they meant it as a fact, observed at the dorm table at four PM on a Sunday in late September. Mama texted me back from Sapulpa: “The twins are reporting in. Sounds like you’re feeding them well. Good.” The dorm-mates finished the leftover strips Monday for lunch. Patty took the dipping-sauce recipes home in her phone notes.

Cornmeal in the dredge for the shatter-crispy crust. Three sauces, three angles. Here’s the build.

Tex-Mex Chicken Strips

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch strips
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 can (10 oz) Rotel diced tomatoes and green chiles, drained
• 3/4 cup shredded Mexican blend cheese
• 2 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)

Instructions

1. Season the chicken. In a large bowl, combine chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, salt, and black pepper. Add the chicken strips and toss until every piece is evenly coated in the spice mixture.
2. Heat the skillet. Pour olive oil into a large skillet and set over medium-high heat. Let the oil get hot — about 90 seconds — before adding the chicken so you get a proper sear instead of a steam.
3. Cook the chicken strips. Add the seasoned chicken in a single layer. Cook 4 to 5 minutes without moving them, then flip and cook another 4 to 5 minutes until cooked through and golden on both sides. Work in batches if your pan is crowded.
4. Add the Rotel. Pour the drained Rotel over the chicken and stir to coat. Reduce heat to medium and cook 2 to 3 minutes, letting the tomatoes and chiles meld into the drippings.
5. Melt the cheese. Scatter shredded cheese evenly over the top. Cover the skillet and let it sit off the heat for 2 minutes, just until the cheese is melted and pulling into the pan.
6. Serve. Plate over rice, stuff into warm flour tortillas, or eat straight from the skillet with chips. Top with cilantro if you have it.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 295 | Protein: 40g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 5g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 540mg