Chicken IN a Waffle

This recipe (well, two recipes) is fairly simple, it just takes some time and may be more of a weekend meal because of that. This recipe made about 7 waffles for me, with leftover chicken. The chicken mixture is great in tacos! I kept meaning to try the waffles with some peach salsa, hot sauce or syrup, but it's addictive on its own.

You'll need a baking pan, aluminum foil and a waffle iron.

Chicken mixture (to be folded into waffle batter):

• 2 chicken breasts
• 2 ripe peaches
• salsa verde and/or sliced fresh peppers, to taste
• 1/4 cup mirin, vinegar, white wine or chicken broth (any one will work)
• 1 yellow onion

Preheat oven to 350 and get a pan ready. Cut up the peaches, taking care to avoid the pit and also your fingers, add to pan. The slices don't need to be very small, they'll basically liquefy by the time this is done. Slice up the onion into thin half rings and toss those into the pan as well. Add the salsa/peppers and your liquid of choice, mix it up a little, and then add the chicken. Rearrange the ingredients so that the chicken is mostly covered.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for about an hour. Once the chicken is easily shredded, do so. Make sure to mash up the peaches with a fork while you're added, and then put it back into the oven uncovered to thicken the sauce. You want it to be moist but not watery - mine took about 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

Waffle batter:

• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups milk or buttermilk
• 1/2 cup melted butter or neutral oil
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup medium-grind cornmeal
• Roughly 1 cup of the chicken mixture

Heat up your waffle iron. Oh yeah.

Beat the eggs in a bowl until foamy. Add milk, butter, baking powder and vanilla; mix. Stir in the flour, cornmeal, salt and sugar until mixed, then add about 1 cup of the chicken mixture. I wasn't measuring here, I just added chicken until it looked like there was enough of the chicken to have some in every spoonful.

Cook waffles as per your waffle iron's instructions. Experience joy.

Tips and notes:

I got chicken breasts sliced thin horizontally from my butcher; this made them cook a lot faster and shred easily.

I used a salsa verde from some outfit called Mrs. Renfro's, it's amazingly tasty but pretty spicy. I love using it in baked/stewed dishes like this chicken mixture.

I might reduce the amount of milk in the waffle recipe next time. The waffles came out incredibly tender but were a little difficult to pull out of the waffle iron without tearing. On the other hand, the texture and crunch was beautiful.

Use up all the waffle batter at once. It can be refrigerated, but the genius of leftover waffles is you can freeze them and then pop them in the toaster for no-trouble breakfasts. Just place the leftover waffles on a cookie sheet or rack until cool, then bag them and slap them into the freezer.

I used peaches here because they work beautifully with peppers and I love peaches in general, but all sorts of sweet and savory combinations would work here.