Crispy Oven-Fried Chicken

I love fried chicken. It's one of my guilty pleasures in American cuisine (save the oxymoron jokes and comments for another time). The crunch of the batter, the moist meat, the flavor of the seasonings on my tongue. Every so often I get a craving that nothing else seems to satisfy except a bite of good fried chicken. Well, I found several recipes for oven-fried chicken that I borrowed from and cobbled together to create the recipe below. The beauty of oven-fried chicken is that it shaves off some of the fat and calories that inevitably come hand-in-hand with chicken fried the old-fashioned way in oil and grease. And this recipe allows you to still get that crunch that is such a key characteristic of fried chicken.

What you'll need:
2 tsp. cayenne pepper
2 tsp. black pepper
1 Tbs. salt
2 tsp. onion powder
1 Tbs. garlic powder
1 tsp. dry mustard
6-8 meaty chicken pieces
2 c. buttermilk
5 c. ground cornflakes
4 Tbs. melted unsalted butter

What you'll need to do:
1. Mix together the cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and dry mustard in a small bowl.*
2. Arrange the chicken pieces in a 13x9-in baking dish so that no pieces overlap. Sprinkle with the spice mix. Pour the buttermilk over the chicken, cover, and put in the fridge for at least an hour. You can also chill overnight.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degree and fit a wire rack inside a baking sheet.
4. Remove the chicken from the buttermilk and dredge in the cornflakes. Drizzle the melted butter over the top of the chicken.
5. Place chicken on the rack so that no pieces overlap. Bake the chicken until crispy, about 35-40 minutes.

*You can adjust the spices to your taste. Scooter and I like garlic, so I added more. If you like your food with a little bite to it, up the amount of pepper you use.

The buttermilk "marinade" helps to keep the chicken super moist. You can use low-fat buttermilk and cut calories and fat further. Also, because the chicken cooks on a rack, the excess oil and grease drips down and away from the meat, meaning it's not cooking in a pool of fat. This is by no means a fat-free or low-fat recipe, but it will help trim some of the bad stuff and will be better than getting fried chicken from a fast-food chain.

You can serve this dish with this mashed potatoes recipe.