Oxymoron or genius? Healthy fried chicken coated in pork rinds
There are two popular food plans today — Paleo and Ketogenic — that, in many ways, make dietary sense.
The Paleo Diet: A paleo website explains that it is: “ … a nutritional approach that focuses on eating only foods that are high in nutrients, unprocessed, and based on the foods that were available and eaten by humans in Paleolithic times.”
The Ketogenic Diet (aka Keto): Defined as: “ … a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet.” A high-fat diet means getting 60 percent to 75 percent of calories from fat. If you're unfamiliar with ketogenic diets, that calories from fat percentage are not a typo. It's why some find a Keto food plan difficult to formulate; getting sufficient fat from “healthy” sources is not as easy as one would think.
Does eating highly processed foods make us fat? Several study-backed books say: Yes. Many believe that today's most common health issues, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease were virtually nonexistent in Paleo times (not sure how they know this with certainty) and link today's sugars-loaded convenience foods to today's health and weight issues. It appears that sugars, no matter the source from refined white sugar to brown rice syrup and agave (yes, fructose is a sugar) due to how they're metabolized, can trigger and maintain weight gain. Bummer because sweet stuff tastes good.
Today, I consume less sugar than I did last year. I've also elevated my diet's fat content and only consume what I consider to be healthy oils (such as avocado and olive) and fats (like organic butter from pastured, all grass-fed cows). My food plan is a combination of Paleo (high on fresh vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, and green beans) and Keto and I do my best to not over-consuming proteins.
Fried chicken is a favorite. My Mom taught 10-year-old Donny how to fry chicken (coat it with salt-and-pepper seasoned flour — she used a paper bag to shake it) and fry it in Wesson oil in a skillet. Wasn't important if it was authentic fried chicken; it tasted great, and its taste memory still lingers.
In my low-fat days, I created recipes for oven-fried chicken, which, to be honest, were more roasted chicken than fried. What I missed most was the flavor-filled crunch of biting into a chicken drumstick. My mouth's watering just thinking about it.
A few weeks ago, reading about keto recipes, I found a recipe that used ground pork rinds to coat the chicken and baked in the oven. At first, the pork rind idea repelled me. I'd tasted fried pork rinds decades ago, and they tasted terrible.
Wanting to give the idea a try I searched for, what may seem an oxymoron, healthy pork rinds. I found them in a product made by Epic Provisions. I used their Artisanal Pork Rinds seasoned with sea salt and black pepper. Epic uses pork raised without antibiotics, and the rinds are guaranteed gluten-free, with zero carbs and not fried in vegetable oil. I bought a bag and tasted them. The verdict: good crunch and mildly flavored. Tasty.
I used those rinds to make “oven-fried” chicken and was impressed with how good it tasted. Hot out of the oven they had the crunch I was hoping for and yet delivered zero carbs and zero sugars. Give them a try.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.