Menage a trois.

This chicken seems to like things in threes I found. I used three different sources to sort of cobble this recipe together. One was a Weight Watchers recipe, one was a Cooking Light recipe and the last source was my sister. None of the printed recipes remotely resemble my final product, so no links today, but I will thank my sister for the idea of using cornmeal for the crust on this oven baked chicken. It was one of those things I thought wouldn't work for some reason. I just figured the cornmeal wouldn't really cook all that well and stay too firm to be enjoyable.

Boy was I wrong about that.

The cornmeal  gave the chicken a nice crunchy crust, enough I didn't miss real fried chicken at all. The breadcrumbs and almonds came in behind the cornmeal for another menage a trois. And the buttermilk marinade left the chicken so moist and juicy, my husband couldn't believe it. I think he brought it up a couple times as we ate last night.


Oven fried Menage a Trois Chicken

2 cups low fat buttermilk
1 tablespoon hot pepper sauce
1 tablespoon onion powder
2 chicken breasts and two leg quarters, with or without skin (I left the skin on for cooking purposes, and because I cut my own chicken up, there wasn't much skin on the breast pieces, lots though on the leg quarters. For the purposes of eating by WW, I am peeling the skin off as needed, but that takes the crust with it, just to keep in mind.)

1/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs
1/4 almonds, ground in food processor until fine
1/3 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1/2-1 teaspoon ancho chili powder, to taste


Combine the buttermilk, hot pepper sauce and onion powder in a container or ziploc bag. Add the chicken and allow to marinate at least 4 hours and up to overnight.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the breads crumbs, corn meal, almonds salt and chili powder in a shallow dish. Remove each piece of chicken from the marinade, shake off the excess and dip in the crust mixture on all sides to coat. Place on a cookie sheet skin side up and repeat with the remaining pieces. Discard the marinade and any crust mixture you may have leftover (I had no crust mix left).

Bake for 40-50 minutes until juices from the chicken run clear and the crust is browned.

Based on an average of all the ingredients, for four folks, this is 8 points a serving. If using only one cut of chicken such has chicken thighs, this would be 4 points a piece. For chicken breasts, as long as it is half a whole breast, it also comes out to 4 points a serving.