the fried chicken catastrophe

I think I'm a decent cook. Chris can show me up any day, but he reads cookbooks and recipes for fun.

So to the point, last night I decided I would fry up some chicken breast tenders, basically because I was too lazy to do anything else with them. Normally I just throw the chicken in the pan with some oil, dash on some salt and pepper, and done! Well, I got crazy and decided to use cornmeal to cover it and make it extra unhealthy. I couldn't find any white cornmeal in my pantry, so I got out the Bisquick. How convenient! There is a recipe for the "Ultimate Chicken Fingers" on the back of the box! Sweet!

I tend to not measure most things when I cook and it always turns out fine, so I skimmed over the ingredients for the batter: an egg, Bisquick, paprika, garlic salt, pepper, ok got it. But I did not read the directions- I can do this myself, right?

Made the batter in 5 seconds flat- threw everything in the bowl and mixed it up. Wait. Oh crap. It's sticky. Is it supposed to do that? I think so? Umm...? No worries, I saw all the ingredients.

Picked up the raw chicken tender and attempted to slather a handful of Bisquick-goo onto it. Slid off, stuck to my hands, plopped back in the bowl... did everything but coat the chicken. My hands were coated though! Dadgummit, I was going to make this work. I tried to take a smaller blob of batter and press it onto the chicken. Didn't stay- it just got sucked back onto the dough that was all over my hands. The batter just got stickier and stickier the more I fooled with it... kinda like cookie dough or bread dough. Oh Lord, I did something wrong. What is the problem here?? Ok, so about 1/8 of the chicken tender ended up with batter on it and I just chucked it in the pan. Did the other 5 tenders the same way.

My hands were covered in goo. Had to use extremely hot water to remove the nasty-eggy-bisquicky-raw-chickeny dough off my hands. EW!

In the pan were several chicken tenders with blobs of dough stuck on them in various places. It sucked.

Meanwhile, Chris came in to observe the madness. Busted out laughing when I told him what happened (still not knowing what I did wrong, but obviously HE knew.) "Honey, you dip the chicken in the egg, THEN you shake it in a baggie of Bisquick to coat it."

Wow... DUUUUUH, Sara.

Note to audience: Read the directions next time.

p.s. If you have a funny cooking story, please comment so I won't feel so stupid. LOL!