Coconut Lime Chicken

Marinade Ingredients:

¾ c coconut milk (I used “Thai Kitchen Lite Coconut Milk”)
2 T. juice of one small lime
1 T. lime zest
1 T sugar
1 t. salt
1 whole chicken cut up (I’m not a fan of the “whole chicken,” so I used a package of chicken tenders)

Marinade Directions:

Mix marinade ingredients in a plastic bag and place chicken pieces in the bag. Shake to coat all pieces. Close the bag and refrigerate for 1-4 hours. Don't marinate overnight as the acid in the lime juice will make the chicken too tender.


Coating Ingredients:
1 c. Flour
1 c. shredded sweetened coconut
2 t. salt
2 T. lime zest

Coating Directions:

Place all ingredients in a food processor and pulse four times to mix and break up the coconut. (Pulsing too much will make the coconut pieces too small. There should be some larger coconut pieces in the coating.) Empty the flour mixture into a plastic bag, add larger breast pieces of marinated chicken to the bag first and shake to coat. Remove and continue. Adding two pieces at a time, shake to coat and remove until they are all well coated.

Instructions (These are the given directions in the recipe. See the next paragraphs for what I did.)

To fry chicken, prepare large cookie sheet with a parchment paper, place a cooling rack on the cookie sheet on top of the parchment. Melt 5 T. bacon grease in a large heavy frying pan. Add chicken coated with flour mixture and fry skin side down until brown. Turn over and brown the other side. Remove and place on cooling rack in the cookie sheet. When all pieces are browned, place in a preheated 400° oven for 30 min. Test with a meat thermometer to make sure the internal temperature is 180°. Serve hot or cool for 2 hours uncovered in the refrigerator.

*I didn’t want to fry them, especially in bacon grease, so I baked them at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. They didn’t have the browning/crispness of the frying, but they tasted good, and were considerably more healthy.

*I had quite a bit of marinade and coating left, and didn’t want to throw it all away. I had a big bag of shrimp in my freezer, so I dumped the whole thing into the marinade for a few hours. I had enough breading to do all of the shrimp, too! I did cook those in a frying pan with a little bit of oil. I didn’t think those would be as good baked.

*I had a jar of Maui coconut-pineapple jam in my pantry, and used it as a dipping sauce. (A little goes a long way.) It was SO good! If you aren’t going to Maui anytime soon, you can purchase some at www.abcstore.com.