For this week’s homework assignment, my story will be about making popcorn chicken, but not the popcorn chicken people usually get in groceries or bubble tea restaurants. This popcorn chicken is made with blended chicken thighs ( like a paste, we didn’t have any food processor) and popcorn instead of the usual white meat chicken and whatever breading other people use.
This idea came about when I challenged my boyfriend to cook something experimental. My first idea was to have him cook something Fall-themed that doesn’t heavily rely on pumpkins. But during our visit to Oasis with a friend, I got some popcorn chicken. And then, they started talking about it and thinking of ways to make it literally. After hearing all of their wild ideas of how to make literal popcorn chicken, I decided to have my boyfriend do this instead. And so, this is how I imagined my story will go:
- Have all the ingredients on the table.
- Prepare the food.
- Pile all the finished prepped food.
- Cook!
- Place cooked food for presentation and tasting.
- Taste-test!
- React
After storyboarding this idea, I came up with these 7 shots:
I’m glad that my story happened how I imagined it to be. However, experimenting on such a strange food like this had us thinking too much about what IS a popcorn chicken. With that, we made a bunch of different iterations of the dish that made it an even more fun and entertaining story.
So what was the best version of popcorn chicken? We’ve collectively decided that it was wrapping the popcorn with the blended chicken, coating it with panko breading, and then deep-frying it. The texture of the popcorn was quite chewy but the flavor of the chicken and the crunchiness of the panko made it better than I expected.
Overall, I enjoyed making this assignment because I get to try new things, challenge my boyfriend to cook something out-of-the-box, and spend time with friends as well. We had so much fun that after eating all of the popcorn chicken, we started brainstorming more cooking challenges we want to do in the future! I am already very excited for the next one!