Back when I ate a regular diet, I never used Panko bread crumbs. In fact, I’d never even heard of them. Keep in mind I didn’t so much cooking until several months after my celiac diagnosis. When shopping at Whole Foods a couple of months ago, I finally found the Kinnikinnick Panko Style bread crumbs I’d read rave reviews about. I decided to give them a try even though I’ve never liked a single prepared gluten-free bread crumb product I’ve purchased in the past five years. Always an optimist (admittedly to my own detriment at times!), I tried not to consider the high (Whole Foods) price of the item, threw the box in the cart and hoped for the best.
When it was warm enough to use the grill burner to fry food out on the deck, I made up some gluten-free chicken fingers. For the flour I used Jules gluten-free with some spices mixed in and for the outer coating, I used the Panko Breadcrumbs from Kinnikinnick. I thought the feel of the crumbs was a little hard and was worried that maybe this experiment would be like all my others with store bought gluten-free breadcrumbs. I liked the fact that there was no odd smell to the product which was the first time that had happened with such a product.
I fried the chicken fingers up and immediately noticed that the coating didn’t start falling off. It stayed on the chicken just as it should have. The coating browned up just perfectly, but what something looks like has little to no bearing on how it actually tastes. Thankfully, the Kinnikinnick product definitely lived up to the hype and the chicken fingers tasted even better than they looked! I mean the fingers were seriously delicious and reminded me of those offered up at restaurants.
While I don’t like to eat a lot of fried foods these days and didn’t do so when I ate gluten, it is nice to have this great option from Kinnikinnick to use every once in a while. Unlike most other ready-made bread crumbs products I’ve tried before, this brand actually tastes like what bread crumbs should taste like. They do not taste like something you’re afraid might damage expensive dental work.
Kinnikinnick is introducing a lot of really great products of late. The Graham Style Crumbs from the line are also fabulous. You can read my review of them here if you missed it. Also, this fall the company is rolling out a gluten-free ready-made pie crust which I’ve already read rave reviews of. It was test tasted at Expo West earlier this year.
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