Bell & Evans Gluten Free Chicken Tenders

http://www.bellandevans.com/glutenfree

I stumbled upon these products at the local Whole Foods.  At first I was put off by the $9 price tag (me hates the expensive foodz) but I was eager to try them since I was dying for some chicken strips.  I had tried the Ian's strips in the past, which were a bit bland and also teensyweensy.  I hoped these would be more adult sized.

In my box there were seven strips.  Four were smaller and three were fairly large.  I'm sure you could eat them all in a serving if you were super hungry, but I found that eating the smaller and then the larger worked well for me.

The chicken strips reminded me of Applebee's.  I always liked those chicken strips because they were flat and thin and soft, so I think that's what really made me think of Applebee's.  The Bell & Evans strips are very thin and flat and not difficult to eat at all.  The chicken is moist and chickeny, and the breading is ... well, it's just sort of there.  It didn't taste like nothing, but it didn't have oodles of flavor.

All-in-all, I would call it a pretty good experience.  Except for the price.  Ha ha ha.

The strips are considered "gluten free" but are made in a facility that processes wheat.  So, eat at your own risk.  They do state on their website, "Our processing plant is monitored sensitive to less than 10 parts per million during production."  If you're super-duper-pooper sensitive, you might want to stay away.  I had no problem with them.  You might also want to avoid these if you can't handle corn, soy, or egg.

Their chicken is also raised without hormones or antibiotics, so you can feel secure knowing that it's basically just chicken in your chicken.  The ingredients list is pretty simple, which is always a bonus. 

A box claims to be 3 servings with 210 calories per serving.  Not bad at all, if you bake them.  They're also a good source of protein. 

Blah blah blah ...

The thing for me about chicken tenders is that making them is such a PITA.  You have to buy the chicken and all the ingredients for breading.  You have to buy oil.  You have to bread your chicken and then fry it, and get oil everywhere and then have your kitchen smell like oil forever, and then if you're single like I am, you have too much chicken around for eons.  No fun.  This is a great, simple solution.  And to be honest, probably costs as much per serving (if I assume 2 servings in a box) as some of those McDonald's chicken strips. 

The only thing missing was a basket and some french fries.  Man, I wish there were a good place to get fries near my house ...

Ian's Gluten Free Chicken Tenders

I was in the middle of my Whole Foods stupor when I saw something big and yellow.  The amazing yellowness drew me out of my stupor long enough for me to see things like "fish fingers" and "chicken tenders" and "french bread pizza" and "gluten free."

Ian's appears to be made to appeal to smaller kids who can't eat those yummy things that their peers would be eating in kids meals.  They have all sorts of healthy and allergen-free foods that appeal to kids, like mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, and corn dog bites. 

Of course, we adults also enjoy those things ...

At Whole Foods I paid about $8 for a (small, small, small) package of chicken tenders.  When I opened the package I found three relatively thick tenders (still small) and two skinnier ones that were mating.  Unfortunately, they had not given birth, otherwise I might have gotten a serving of tenders worthy of eating half the package. 

See, five tenders is a serving as far as I'm concerned.  If it were six, I might be able to split it 3/3.  Three is almost a reasonable serving, and then I could eat some kind of side dish.  =meal.  But five ... see, two would be a very pathetic serving.  So I just baked all five.  $8 lunch at home.

Okay, so hopefully they would taste good.

After some struggling with the oven, I managed to bake my tenders and get them into my room.  I took out some salad dressing for dipping (honey dijon) and set out to test my tenders.

I have to say that they are pretty good.  My attempts at cooking tenders in the past had resulted in the breading just falling right off.  So I was glad when the breading stayed on these.  The chicken was cooked all the way through despite my oven issues, and the breading was crispy except where oil had kind of seeped out of it, as happens when you bake things. 

The only real issue I had was that they were decidedly unsalted.  I'm one of those people who has blood pressure not affected by salt (in fact, my bp is lowwww), so I don't mind a heavy dose of salt.  These are very, very unsalted.  The salad dressing helped balance that out, so it wasn't so bad.  Just, a little bit of seasoning of some sort might have been nice. 

All in all, after over a year of missing out on chicken nuggets and tenders and patties, I was very pleased.  I would definitely buy these again if I won the lottery and try the other varieties of foods available.