I’m a huge fan of fried chicken, but less excited about what the saturated grease does to my stomach. Enter this easy recipe that gives you utterly yummy, juicy chicken legs with 1/3 of the fat and none of the nasty. It does take about a day of advanced planning, but in general, it’s a very easy dish.

Buttermilk Baked Chicken

Ingredients

• 9 or 10 chicken drumsticks
  Budget Note: If you buy a big batch of drumsticks on sale and freeze them, you can defrost half the batch at the same time you marinate them.
• 1 cup buttermilk
• Pepper hot sauce – Tabasco, Franks, or Louisiana hot sauce all work
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 cup plain or Italian breadcrumbs

Prep

• In a small bowl, combine the buttermilk, a few dashes of hot sauce, and the salt and pepper together and stir.
• Pour the mixture into a large freezer-sized ziplock bag. Add the chicken drumsticks, frozen or fresh, into the bag with the mixture. Move the chicken and mxture around to make sure its all coated and place in the fridge to marinate. If the chicken is fresh, marinate for about 3 hours. If it’s frozen, marinate for 24 hours.
• Once your chicken is done marinating, pour the bread crumbs into a bowl or onto a plate. Roll each drumstick around to fully coat and place on a baking sheet coated in olive oil.
• Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

Now you got yo’self a plate of chicken. Serve with whatever you normally like – baked beans, corn on the cob, potato salad, or mashed taters and gravy. No KFC shiz-nits for you!

~Nom On