Crispy Coconut Chicken With Mango Salsa

Submitted by LilPinkieJ

"Totally Tropical! I served this for our church at a Girls Night - Tropical Breeze event, which we held at a friend's house. We had the hot tub going and served this plus many other great dishes. Not your typical church lady luncheon! If you want, you can easily make this into a great appetizer. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces before breading and serve with a bowl of salsa on the side. This works well with chicken thighs too, and those pieces are cheaper."

 

• Ready In: 30mins
• Ingredients: 16
• Serves: 6

ingredients

• Mango Salsa

• 1 1⁄2 cups fresh mango, finely diced (frozen is ok too)
• 1 1⁄2 cups fresh pineapple, finely diced
• 1⁄2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1⁄2 cup red pepper, diced
• 1⁄2 cup red onion, minced
• 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
• 1 tablespoon light olive oil

• Chicken

• salt and pepper
• 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 2 cups unsweetened coconut, shredded
• 2 cups panko breadcrumbs
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1⁄4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 cup peanut oil
• 2 cups mango salsa

directions

1. Toss first 7 ingredients together in a bowl. Season with a little salt and pepper.
2. Place the coconut, bread crumbs, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl and stir to combine.
3. Place the eggs in a separate bowl. To bread the chicken, dip the breasts in the egg, then coat well in the coconut mixture.
4. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add 2 to 3 chicken breasts (don't crowd the pan). Fry chicken for a few minutes on one side, then turn and fry another 4-5 minutes until the meat is no longer pink. Remove chicken from pan and pat with paper towels.
5. Top each breast with mango salsa.

Reviews

[Lynne the Pirate Queen]

This was really nice, especially on this abnormally cold spring day in Chicago -- it gave us a little taste of sunshine! I had to make a few adjustments, based on availability: I used canned/drained pineapple, frozen/thawed mango, green bell pepper, sweetened coconut (but I then omitted the additional sugar to compensate), and canola oil instead of peanut. Even with these changes, we had a wonderful meal. I really liked how it all came together in terms of flavor. On their own, neither the salsa or the chicken were particularly great (to my tastes -- my roomie loved it all, even separately), but when the two combined on the tongue... WOW. I think that the next time I make this, I will follow the advice of Chef floWer and adjust the amount of the breading and make sure that I have the oil at a lower temperature, since I also had a lot of breading mixture left over and almost burnt the chicken (my error... I'm not used to "frying" chicken :P ). Thanks for sharing!

 

[Chef floWer]

This was such a great meal to make during summer. We have fresh mangos and pineapples at the moment, so the Mango Salsa was delicious. For the Crispy Coconut Chicken I would make two changes. 1 - I would halve the coconut and panko mixture (I had to throw half of it out). 2 - I would slice the chicken in half or use a tenderiser to pat out the thicker bits of the chicken. I found they took a little longer to cook and the coconut coating was almost burnt. I used normal eggs for Hubby and Little Miss (DD) but used egg substitute for myself. For the last ingredient on your list I wasn't sure what type to salsa I had to use so I used a tomato base and that worked well for us. The meal made a complete dinner with wonderful flavours. Thank you Jess4Freedom