Buttermilk Ranch Oven Fried Chicken

Could this mouth-watering recipe for Buttermilk Ranch Oven Fried Chicken be the one you serve your family tonight? If you love perfectly cooked chicken that's moist on the inside and absolutely crunchable on the outside, this is the fried chicken recipe for you.

Finding an easy chicken recipe that doesn't take very long to put on the table at night is not as easy as most would think. If you're baking chicken, it takes up to an hour just to cook it and then there's all of that prep time beforehand. With this fried chicken recipe, the trick is to start marinating it either the day or morning before you intend to make it. The yummy ranch buttermilk marinating sauce is simply to die for, and the longer you marinate your chicken in it, the more deliciously juicy your chicken's going to be at the end of the day. This happens to be the most challenging aspect of the entire recipe � finding a few moments in the evening or early morning to mix the sauce, add it to a Ziploc bag, and then plop the chicken inside. Keep the bag in the fridge until the moment of truth arrives � cooking time.

When you are cooking chicken, turkey, or any other kind of meat for that matter, it's important to carry out food safety precautions to ensure your meal will be a healthy one. There are a number of harmful bacteria that thrive on meat and meat products, and so you need to practice proper hygiene when purchasing, storing, cooking, and freezing your meat dishes. When you are at the grocery store, for example, do ensure that you keep all of your meats separate and ask your cashier to wrap them in individual plastic, biodegradable bags to avoid any kind of cross contamination. Be sure to head home fairly quickly after your grocery store visit because meat needs to be placed in the fridge within approximately 2 hours of purchasing, as chilling prevents bacteria growth. Keep your meat stored in the fridge right up until you're ready to cook it � or, in this case, you'd remove it from the fridge just to pierce it with a fork and place it in the marinating bag, and then you'd put it back into the fridge again. Always use soap with hot water when washing your hands and do so before and after handling meat. You'll also want to clean off all utensils, cupboards, butcher's blocks, and cutting boards the meat has come into contact with while you've been preparing it. This also goes for the pots and pans that you cook it in � once the meal is done, you'll want to soak these in hot soapy water for up to ten minutes before scrubbing and rinsing. If you use a dishwasher, then you'll want to rinse any dishes you've cooked your meat in before placing them inside. If you have leftovers after your fried chicken meal, you'll want to make sure you put them in the fridge soon after the meal is done. Simply pack them into airtight plastic bags or containers and put them on the middle shelf of the fridge, near the air jets where it's always the coolest. If you don't plan on eating your leftovers over the next few days, then you can always print the day's date on the bag and then place it in the freezer where it will stay edible for up to a month.

This yummy fried buttermilk ranch chicken recipe comes from the Mom on Time Out website, where you can find lots more chicken recipes as well as recipes for every meal, holiday, or special occasion.*