Chicken Croquettes, Buttermilk, Biscuits and Narcolepsy

With chicken croquettes and buttermilk gravy on my mind, I had planned to write a long post about making and using roux. But then I decided to add Texas’s Sunday Morning Biscuits and frankly, you need to make them NOW. They are life-changing. I’ve made a lot of biscuit recipes, and most of them sucked, requiring self-rising flours and fridge time.

My wayward Yankee heart has seen the light and will go forth to sin no more.

But onto chicken croquettes. My children have a wide and varied palate, as long as whatever it is you are cooking is rolled into a ball and deep fried. I tried making chicken croquettes because I can sneak in a SPOT of vegetable – celery, carrot, onion – and they gobble them up. I usually start with a grocery store roasted breast for a few bucks. You can poach your own chicken if you want. First I obliterate my vegetables with the food processor and the chicken right after until it’s pasty and smooth.

Then I make my roux. In case you’ve never made one before, roux is butter (or another fat, but we’ll talk about that later) and a few tablespoons of flour mixed over low heat (And never browning and NEVER burning). When it’s crumbly and together, you add a cup or so of HOT (not burnt, but def hot) milk and whisk the hell out of it over low heat. You keep going until it’s looking like vanilla pudding or mayonnaise.

I started making roux many years ago when I got it into my head that I had to know how to make a soufflé. And believe me, I fucked it up many many times. The hot milk thing is a Julia Child trick, I’ve rarely seen it mentioned anywhere else. But the roux pulls together much quicker. A roux is the basis for a million things. Once you master this it’s only a few steps to a soufflé, or béchamel, or mac and cheese – anything, really.

This is the finalized roux, with the addition of nutmeg and salt/pepper.

Then the pulverized chicken and my roux (I folded in some egg yolks into it as well) is folded together. I threw in some bread crumbs (too many frankly) and put in the fridge until go time. I decided to roll these in egg and more breadcrumbs anyway. Anything to get the kids to eat.

When I was speaking to Ms. Texas about my project, she suggested using the oil I used to fry for the basis of a buttermilk gravy. Which sounded fine – but I use canola for the safety/higher flashpoint – and canola doesn’t have a lot going for it tastewise. I decided to use a little bacon grease for my second roux for the gravy. This was my first time making a roux without butter (just the bacon grease and a little of my canola) and it took a lot longer to pull together, even with the addition of hot buttermilk. Since my band is not as fond of milk and cream as I, I decided to add a little chicken broth to mix. Probably added too much, didn’t cook down as quickly as I would have liked.

But the biscuits, did I mention the biscuits? HEAVEN. No lie. Amazing. And here was our dinner. The children were thrilled and my eldest actually remarked that “the food was good.”

OMG, what did you say? Oh, right, I guess I should’ve made a vegetable. Oh well.

My croquette recipe is adapted from something on the internet. I'll try to find it and post.

The evening ended with us all quiet on the couch, each playing "Temple Run" on our respective mobile devices, incapable of thought or conversation.  Carb/dairy/fat trifecta achieved.