One night while lying in bed, I had recipes tossing through my brain with visions of tantalizing food (there just might be something wrong with me), when a new recipe dawned on me for chicken. I had tried pecan-crusted chicken and sesame-crusted fish with great success, so why couldn't I use a different nut...like almonds? And what if said almonds were the greatest, most addicting almonds of all time...smoked almonds? Yes, this could work I thought. This could be amazing. So while I tried to fall asleep the thought of forgetting my brilliant idea was eating away at me, so I promptly got up to write down my thoughts. Finally my idea has come to fruition.And it was a mighty tasty idea.
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Serves 3-4
6 chicken thighs, bone-in1 cup flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups smoked almonds
Salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.
Add smoked almonds to a food processor and pulse until they are fine crumbles. You could also put them in a bag and bash them a bit with a rolling pin or something else heavy...you just want to make sure you get the crumbles fine enough. If they are too big they won't stick to the chicken.
Rinse chicken under cold water and pat dry. Season both sides with salt and pepper (while the seasoning on a smoked almond is quite salty, for some reason the chicken still needs to be salted. Go easy on it if you are worried about it and salt it after you have tried it.) Set up three bowls: one with flour, one with eggs and one with the smoked almond crumbs. Dust each piece of chicken with flour, then dip in egg, and then cover with almond crumbs. Place on prepared baking sheet.
Bake for 40-45 minutes and then serve.
Click here for printable version of Smoked Almond Chicken
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THE RESULTS?
These were good. Real good. But can I make a confession to you? After all that thinking and drooling over this would-be recipe, and the thought of those lip smacking almonds coating the chicken I really expected it to be PHENOMENAL. So the end result slightly disappointed me in the fact that it wasn't phenomenal but that they were real good. But when your supper comes out real good there really isn't anything to complain about I guess :)