Cooking with Kids: Easy Chicken and Waffles Recipe

This Chicken and Waffles recipe is a great project to cook together with kids! They'll love helping and love eating it even more, especially with the yummy shredded carrot salad with peanuts and raisins. (Skip to recipes.)

Cooking with Meredith

Breakfast for Dinner - always a winner!

Big kids and little ones alike love this kind of comfort food. Whipping up a batch of waffles is fun and easy. Serving them as a base for a savoury meal is a cheeky twist. Stir up a quick pan of flavourful white sauce, tear apart a ready-made rotisserie chicken, and add a drizzle of sweet maple syrup for a winning meal that comes together quickly and is a great project to do together with the young chefs in your family. Add a tasty shredded carrot salad for colour and crunch.

Meredith and I had a great time making this meal.

She loved stirring up the waffle batter and trimming the carrots.

She had fun getting her hands greasy taking the meat off the chicken carcass (great anatomy lesson).

It's important for kids to know where our food comes from, so seeing it in its complete state makes for better understanding of the food as a whole. Meredith shelled the peanuts for the salad, and helped grate the carrots. Grating was a tough job, so we took turns.

Then it was time to cook the waffles.

Slicing up a couple green onions for a garnish, and seasoning the carrot salad:

Meredith was the assembly line chef who helped put it all together on the plates.

Then we sat down to eat it. The meal received a definite thumbs up!

* * * * *

Kitchen Frau Notes: Make your favourite waffle recipe, reducing the sugar to 1 or 2 teaspoons, or use the recipe below. If you don't want to make the white sauce, replace it with a smear of butter or cream cheese across the waffle before you add the chicken.

Use leftover roasted chicken for this recipe or use meat from a purchased rotisserie chicken (a quick time-saver).

Skills practiced: Making batter, making a roux, shelling peanuts, peeling & shredding carrots, boning a cooked chicken

Waffles

slightly adapted from 'The Fanny Farmer Cookbook'

2 eggs
1 cup (240ml) milk (we used unsweetened almond milk)
3 tablespoons oil
1½ cups (210gms) flour (or gluten free flour blend* + ½ teaspoon xanthan gum)
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt

* We used the millet flour blend from Gluten Free Girl: 400 gms millet flour + 300 gms sweet rice flour + 300 gms potato starch

Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add the milk and oil. Whisk in the remaining ingredients. The dough is better if it can sit for 15 to 30 minutes before baking.

Preheat the waffle iron. Brush it with oil or spray lightly with cooking oil spray. Put a large spoonful of batter in the center of the waffle iron and spread it about 1 inch from the edges. Close the lid and bake until the steaming stops and the waffles are crispy and golden brown.

Keep the waffles warm on a pan in the oven set to its lowest temperature, until all the waffles are cooked and you are ready to assemble them.

Makes 4 large (7 inch) waffles.

White Sauce

2 tablespoons butter or dairy-free margarine
2 tablespoons sweet rice flour (or regular flour)
1¼ cups (300ml) milk (we used unsweetened almond milk)
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
½ teaspoon salt
pinch of pepper
pinch of nutmeg

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Stir in the flour and cook until the mixture is bubbling, stirring all the time. (This flour and butter mixture is called a roux - pronounced roo!)

Pour in the milk, a few tablespoons at a time and stir with a whisk after each addition until it is smooth. Keep stirring all the time.

Add the mustard, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add a little bit more milk if the sauce is too thick.

Carrot Salad

1 lb. (450gms) carrots (about 4 cups, grated)
juice of half a lemon
3 tablespoons oil
¼ cup (60ml) golden raisins
¼ cup (60ml) unsalted peanuts
1 teaspoon runny honey
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Trim the ends off the carrots and grate them. Place them in a bowl and squeeze the lemon juice over top, using a lemon squeezer or your hands. Add the oil, raisins, peanuts, honey, salt, and pepper. Toss it all together well to combine.

To Put Together the Chicken Waffles

waffles
white sauce
cooked chicken meat
a few sliced green onions
maple syrup
carrot salad

Place a waffle on a plate. Add a few spoonfuls of the warm white sauce (or a smear of butter or cream cheese instead).

Top with a handful of shredded cooked chicken meat (about ½ cup), and a sprinkle of green onions.

Then add a little drizzle of maple syrup and a spoonful of carrot salad on the side. Mmm.

Serves 4.

Guten Appetit!

For easy, kid-friendly recipes, see other ‘Cooking With Kids’ posts here.

Want to receive new Kitchen Frau recipes directly to your email? Sign up here and you’ll get a handy and useful kitchen tip along with each recipe, too. (No spam ever.)

If you like my recipes, follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. You’d make my day!