Hi Aspirers! I hope you are enjoying my weekly content thus far. I’m trying my best to keep up with my schedule by uploading a new post every Tuesday you all. I wanted to share with you all a new recipe I tried. Not too long ago, one of my friends who happens to also be a chef ManifestKitchen participated in an IG live by showing us how to prepare one of her favorite home dishes. I couldn’t just watch the IG live, I wanted to participate. I went to the grocery store and bought the ingredients I needed to follow along but with a little twist.
She was planning on showing us how to make Sierra Leone Fish balls but some of the ingredients didn’t work for me. What did I decide to do? Change up the ingredients just a little. What’s great about cooking is that you can experiment with different flavors and try different alternatives to fit your needs. In the end, you’ll see the actual recipe if you would like to try the recipe instead of my alternatives.
Here are the ingredients I used:
Bread crumbs, oil, almond milk, coconut flour, salt, ground pepper, chili powder, parsley, garlic powder, sliced onions, ground chicken, two eggs, potatoes, and steamed cauliflower (not shown because I decided to add later.) As you’ve seen in my previous recipe posts I don’t measure. I measure base on what I believe will be a good amount.
The first thing you need to do is pour your bread crumbs onto a plate and mix in your seasonings. Next create an egg batter with both your eggs, a few splashes of milk and add the seasonings into your egg batter and mix. Lastly, pour your flour onto a plate and mix in your seasonings. If you don’t like some of these seasonings feel free to switch them out. I’m not a huge salt person so I didn’t use as much salt compared to the other seasonings I’ve added.
Let’s start cooking your ground chicken. As a meat alternative, you could use ground beef, turkey, or fish if you don’t want to use chicken. As your chicken is cooking add in your seasoning. While you are cooking your chicken peel, and dice your potatoes and start boiling them in a pot of water until tender. Unfortunately, I don’t have images for that step. Sorry!
Once your chicken is done cooking drain and set aside to cool for a few minutes. Finish boiling your potatoes and once the potatoes are cooked drain, and run the potatoes over cold water to speed up the cooling process.
After your chicken and potatoes have cooled down, some add it into a mixing bowl. Add in your potatoes, onions, cauliflower, seasoning, onions (sauté before or throw in raw). To decide how much cauliflower I used one potato to one cup of steamed cauliflower into my bowl.
After everything is added into the bowl, now it’s time to mash your mixture together. You want it to look like the picture on the right. Once it’s completely mashed together you’re ready to start rolling.
Now it’s time to turn your oil on low, so when you are finally ready to start frying it won’t take too long to heat up completely.
As your oil starts to slowly heat up, roll your mixture up into balls. Roll them smaller than how I did it. You’ll thank me later. As you roll the balls, also squeeze them to make sure they are firm and they will hold. If not, they will fall apart while frying. I know by experience because it happened to me. I started with 21 balls and ended up with only 10 left. Try not to make the same mistake as I did.
Now that you have rolled your chicken balls now it’s time to coat them. First, dip your ball in the flour, then egg, and lastly bread crumbs. Once you are ready to deep fry turn up your pot of oil to medium-high.
Check your oil to see if it’s hot. If so, you can start frying. Grab a pair of tongs and start slowing adding in a few balls at a time. Don’t overfill the pot. You’ll know when they are done once they are golden brown.
There you have it deep fry chicken balls. For a dipping sauce try chipotle ranch. I highly recommend it. Like I mentioned before, I wanted flavor in every layer. By using coconut flour instead of regular flour it helps make this much lighter.
I hope you enjoyed my healthy rendition of my friend’s recipe. Check out her original recipe down below. Let me or ManifestKitchen know how your food turns out.
Talk soon, Courtney Renee
