Paula Deen's Southern Fried Chicken (or Tofu)

This was such a scrum-diddly-umptious dinner! We made fried chicken (and tofu!), per Paula Deen's recipe (with a few minor tweaks), and served it along-side mashed potatoes with gravy, and peas. Oh yeah, we invited Kim to dinner too :)

For obvious health reasons, this is not a meal we'll have often, but when we do have it we'll definitely enjoy it!

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup water
• About 1 cup hot red pepper sauce (we used Louisiana)
• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• House seasoning, recipe follows
• 1 chicken breast
• 4 slices of tofu, 3/4" thick
• Oil, for frying (I used veggie oil...bad, I know, but it works the best!)

Directions

In a medium size bowl, beat the eggs with the water. Add enough hot sauce so the egg mixture is bright orange. In another bowl, combine the flour and pepper. Season the tofu/chicken with the house seasoning, let marinate in refrigerator for at least 20 minutes. Dip the seasoned tofu/chicken in the egg, and then coat well in the flour mixture.

Heat the oil to 350 degrees F in a deep pot (I used a small saute pan, and covered it with an oil screen and it worked just fine). Do not fill the pot more than 1/2 full with oil (we did a very slight amount of oil - enough to get the tofu/chicken fried, but not so much that we felt guilty!)

Fry the tofu/chicken in the oil until brown and crisp. Dark meat takes longer then white meat. It should take dark meat about 13 to 14 minutes, white meat around 8 to 10 minutes.

House Seasoning:

• 1 cup salt (this is WAY too much salt - we used less than 1/2 C salt, and removed much of the seasoning before dipping the tofu/chicken into the egg mix. Had we prepared per these directions, it wouldn't have been edible)
• 1/4 cup black pepper
• 1/4 cup garlic powder
• *Leftover seasoning can be stored in an air-tight container for up to 6 months