Crispy Crunchy Chicken Cakes will become a fan favorite, especially for those fussy kids! Don’t you think that there are certain types of foods that are just so appealing that they have a huge fan base? Take pizza for example. Chinese dumplings. Spaghetti and all other kinds of pasta.
Here’s another dish that you can add to your list. Pancakes (sweet and savory alike), fritters and other types of crispy, delicious cakes have universal appeal. Which brings me to these chicken cakes, which are crunchy on the outside and soft and tender on the inside.
Rotisserie Chicken is your best friend
The idea for these Crunchy Crispy Chicken Cakes was born from my love of crab cakes. But good lump crabmeat is very expensive and my craving for crispy cakes cannot be limited to the few times a year when I would indulge in such a luxurious ingredient.
As you all know by now, I believe that a great dish is only as good as the quality of ingredients you use. For crab cakes, only lump crabmeat will do. And for these chicken cakes, rotisserie chicken is the way to go because it is juicy and tender and melds really well with the other ingredients.
And don’t forget that when a recipe calls for mayo, it has to be Hellmanns. Our family favorite for decades!
And let’s be honest: when you are doing your weekly meal planning, it’s really difficult to come up with original ideas for chicken night after night. Not to mention the challenge of finding things your kids will eat instead of pushing the food around on the plate.
Or, if you have kids like mine, who actually fed things to the dog because eating their green beans was the only way to get dessert. These chicken cakes are kid- friendly not only because they are cute little cakes but also because they have so much flavor.
Because these tasty morsels use rotisserie chicken, the prep time for this recipe is quite short so this makes a great weeknight dinner.
Although the mixture has to rest in the refrigerator so that the cakes stay together when you saute them, you can make coleslaw and roast some fingerling potatoes while the chicken mixture firms up in the refrigerator.
Not your average chicken dinner
While these Crunchy Crispy Chicken Cakes might be made of chicken, your family and friends will appreciate their elegance and the fact that they are not your usual ho-hum standard chicken dinner.
You can even make the cakes half their size and serve them as an appetizer. Or for your littles, make them into chicken nugget sized pieces and let them dip them in rancy.
Try putting a chicken cake on a buttered slider bun (or my favorite, a Hawaian roll) with coleslaw if you are looking for something fun and informal. No matter what you do with these Crunchy Crispy Chicken Cakes, you can’t go wrong becaus everyone loves a dainty little crunchy-on-the-outside-tender-on-the-inside morsel.
Crispy Crunchy Chicken Cakes
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons olive oil divided
- ½ cup onion finely chopped
- 1/3 cup celery hearts finely chopped
- ¼ cup parsley finely chopped
- 2 slices stale white or whole wheat bread
- 1/3 cup mayonnaise
- 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
- 2 eggs well-beaten
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
- 2 cups rotisserie chicken shredded and then chopped into small pieces
- 3 tablespoons butter
Instructions
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Heat 1 ½ tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the onion and celery and sauté for 3-4 minutes until the onion is translucent. Transfer the mixture to a medium sized bowl and set aside to cool. Do not wash the skillet as you will use it to cook the chicken cakes.
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In the bowl of a food processor pulse the parsley and the bread slices. Add the bread crumbs to the bowl with the onions and celery. Mix in the mayonnaise, mustard, eggs, salt and Tabasco.
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Fold in the rotisserie chicken and refrigerate the mixture for at least an hour.
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With a large ice cream scoop, scoop out 12 balls of the chicken mixture and put them on a sheet of waxed paper while you cook the chicken cakes.
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Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a large cookie sheet with aluminum foil and spray it with non-stick spray.
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In the large skillet, add half the remaining olive oil and 1 ½ tablespoons butter over medium high heat. Add six of the chicken cakes to the pan and cook for 5-7 minutes until the bottom starts to brown. Don’t move them around in the pan for the first 3-4 minutes. After they are golden brown, flip them over and cook for 5-7 minutes on the other side.
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Remove the chicken cakes from the pan, place on the cookie sheet and put them in the oven while you repeat the cooking process with the remaining 6 cakes. Place the second batch on the pan in the oven and reduce heat to 250 degrees. Keep warm until you are ready to serve them.
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Serves 4
Recipe Notes
Serve these delicious crunchy chicken cakes with cole slaw and roasted fingerling potatoes.
This looks delicious! I just printed this to make in the near future. And it looks easy to make without too many ingredients and the use of rotisserie chicken.
Thank you so much. They are yummy. Serve them with cranberry sauce!
Found your blog on Brandless following blog recipes and my love of hummus inspired recipes! Love the idea of a using roasted chicken this way
Oh my gosh Hillary! Thanks so much for reading my blog. I am very appreciative!