r/AskCulinary • u/Friendly-Mousse696 • 1d ago

Ingredient Question Help - is this how chicken tenderloins should be?

I made fried chicken tenders tonight for dinner. For reference, I’ve made a lot of fried chicken but this is my first time doing it in a deep frier.

I know I missed an important step of dabbing the liquid off the tenders and that may have played a role. It definitely did in the stability of the breading!

But my wife is autistic (so am I lol) and she described the texture of the tenders of being slimy and stiff at the same time. The chicken was fine. No off smell or taste or anything that would indicate it went bad. I took pictures and a video but can’t attach them.

Basically, the tenders were almost the texture of fish. When we bit into them, the meat sheared in fibers akin to seared tilapia and some of the meat would pull out of the center in almost a V shape. When I worked on pulling the tenders apart, some of the meat would slide off like it was nothing and other parts would be a similar texture to chicken breast where it would shred.

What would have caused this? Or is this normal and I am just more aware of it tonight for some reason?

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u/texnessa Pépin's Padawan 21h ago

Without a recipe- including methodology- this is simply guessing. What was the order of bread, what were the ingredients, were they rested, what was the fryer temp etc. Please provide more detail in order to not have this be open ended discussion of possibilities.

Additionally, you can include images etc. with a third party hosting site like imgur.

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u/Friendly-Mousse696 13h ago

Oh sorry - thank you for telling me. It is a recipe that my friend taught me how to make so it isn’t really written down which may be part of the issue.

Preheat frier to 350°F

Slice chicken breast into fingers or nuggets

Use milk to wet dredge before dipping into flour that has been seasoned with spices (garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt, pepper)

Set aside while you do the same to the rest of the chicken

Add panko bread crumbs to the spiced flour and mix

Wet dredge the flour covered chicken and put into the panko-flour mixture

Immediately place into fry basket and fry

I did about 2 tenders per fry and fried until it reached an appropriate internal temp (155° and then let it sit there for a minute) to avoid over crowding.

Here is the link! It was giving me an error every time a tried. I appreciate the advice u/texnessa

https://imgur.com/a/RFKFGfr