I love Aggie's blog for a number of reasons, and these chicken bites are definitely one of them. Check out her blog for yourself and try this recipe.
Aggie uses a method called air baking. I had never tried it but am a big fan now. You place a cooling rack inside a cookie sheet and put your chicken pieces on that. You don't end up with a crispy side and a non-crispy side this way. (I've only done this when I've needed to keep waffles warm in the oven -- it keeps them from getting soggy. I guess the same thing works when baking chicken!)
While Aggie dips hers in honey mustard prior to coating them in panko, and I know I would have loved them that way, I went a different route. My boyfriend is not a big fan of mustard -- although he didn't seem to mind it in this dish -- so I did the traditional dredge in flour, coat with egg, and then dipped the pieces in panko mixed with some garlic salt and pepper.
Aggie then says to spritz with nonstick cooking spray or olive oil. I have a few small spray bottles of different olive oils -- one flavored with white truffle, one with sesame, and the other with roasted garlic. Since I was already using garlic salt, I spritzed my panko-crusted, garlic-salted chicken with the roasted garlic olive oil. (I'm thinking next time I can coat them with teriyaki sauce and panko and then spritz with the sesame oil.) Then I baked them, oiled and aligned on the cooling rack, for about 15 minutes.
The chicken pieces were moist, the outsides crunchy, and the flavor mildly garlicky. The bites were perfectly complemented by rice and broccoli.
I'm off to the Cape tonight. Hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend! I'll be back next week with some new delicious dishes to share!