You are going to love these low sodium “buttermilk” fried chicken tenders. They are crispy on the outside and pack a ton of flavor, so you won’t even miss the salt. Promise.
My favorite food when I was little was fried chicken. I remember asking my mom for fried chicken and mashed potatoes (and don’t forget her awesome white gravy!) for my birthday dinner. As I have gotten older, my tastes (and diet) have changed, so it is not something that we eat with much frequency. But for the occasional treat? Yes, please!
You have probably tried fried chicken recipes where you marinate or coat the chicken in buttermilk. Because buttermilk is pretty high in sodium, we skip it in this recipe and replace it with a mix of whipping cream and vinegar. Why whipping cream instead of milk? Because it is very thick, and we will want that for the flour coating (you’ll see).
After the chicken has marinated for several hours and you are ready to fry, you mix up the flour coating. Start with flour and spices and stir in some of the reserved marinade. This creates little chunks in the coating that stick to the chicken. When the tenders are fried, those little chunks turn into crispy little pockets of delicious.
Then you just pull the chicken from the marinade one at a time, dredge in the flour mixture and set aside on a baking sheet or a plate. I usually do this in smaller batches as I fry, but that is up to you.
Then you just deep fry them in batches until they are golden brown (5 ish minutes in 350°F oil). Then you serve the chicken with Easy Baked Fries (or maybe some Creamy Low Sodium Mashed Potatoes ☺). I actually made a spicy honey mustard for Joe, which was delicious. One of these days I will write down exactly what I did and get it posted here so that you can try it too.
Low Sodium Fried Chicken Tenders
NUTRITIONAL SUMMARY:
400 calories per serving; 141 mg sodium per serving; 588 mg potassium per serving; 366 mg phosphorus per serving
- Yield: 6 1x
Ingredients
Marinade:
- 1 cup half and half
- 1 tsp vinegar
- ½ tsp cayenne
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- 2 lbs chicken tenders
Breading:
- 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
- ¾ tsp black pepper
- ¾ tsp garlic powder
- ¾ tsp smoked paprika
- 1 ½ tsp sodium-free baking powder
- 3 Tbsp of the marinade
Cooking:
- 3–4 cups vegetable or peanut oil
Instructions
Marinade:
- To make the marinade, mix the half and half, vinegar, cayenne, garlic powder, and smoked paprika. Set aside 3 tablespoons of the marinade and refrigerate. You will use this later for the breading.
- Place the chicken tenders in a larger ziploc bag with the rest of the marinade. Seal the bag and refrigerate for overnight, or at least 2 hours.
Breading & Cooking:
- Heat the oil over medium high heat (about 350°F to 375°F).
- Stir together the flour, pepper, garlic powder, smoked paprika, and baking powder. Using a fork, stir in the reserved 3 tablespoons of marinade until there are little clumps throughout the flour mixture.
- Spread the flour mixture on a large plate. Working with one chicken tender at a time, remove the chicken from the marinade and coat with the flour mixture. Place the breaded tenders on a baking sheet. (Tip – you can cover the baking sheet in tin foil for easy cleanup.)
- Place the breaded chicken tenders into the hot oil, being careful not to crown the pan. (I use a relatively small pan, so I can fry about 4 pieces at a time.) Cook the chicken tenders until they have browned nicely, about 4-6 minutes.
- Remove the tenders from the oil and place on a paper towel-lined plate. Fry the remaining tenders in batches. Cool for a few minutes before serving.
Notes
Nutrition is calculated assuming that the chicken absorbs two ounces oil for the entire recipe, and that we use all of the breading and marinade. You will likely use a bit less, but I erred on the side of caution when calculating nutrition.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 3-4 pieces
- Calories: 400
- Sodium: 141
Recipe adapted from Once Upon a Chef, Buttermilk Fried Chicken Tenders
My husband is a little over a year into kidney dialysis and (renal diet) so he is VERY LIMITED….We thought that a low sodium diet would be easy….(BOY WERE WE WRONG)
Thats when we discovered what and how bad Phosphorus and Protiens and other things can be damaging to ones kidneys when taken in HIGH QUANTITY….
I found Davita Kidney Friendly site and OMG. We are so blessed now. We got this Chicken Tender recipe through that site and with NOT MUCH TWEEKING. My husband LOVES THIS SO MUCH. He had me cook this 4 times already (LOL)..
So WE just want to say THANK YOU from the bottom of out HEARTS to our still functioning KIDNEYS for the amazing recipes….
The past month my husband has not had the same meal in one week..
I LOVE and ENJOY cooking now more than I did when we first started the diet plan.
I almost gave up hope on him having a FLAVORFUL and HEALTY lifestyle.
If not for me taking the TIME and do a little RESEARCHING,,,,well I just don’t know.
Now THANKS to DAVITA and all the other RECIPE SITES affiliated with them, We can now ENJOY and LOVE FOOD once again you have opened up a WHOLE NEW WORLD for him….
Thank You So Much,,
Sincerely
Beth and Valente Moreno
“YOU CHANGED OUR LIVES”
Could these be cooked in an airfryer?
I have never used an air fryer so I’m not sure. 🤔
Just made these. The batter is terrific and it comes out just like the photos. I marinated for only two hours and I think that it would have been even better if I had marinated overnight. Please keep posting good recipes. Yours are some of the best I’ve come across!
★★★★★
So glad to hear that they turned out well for you. I’ll keep posting!
Love your recipes and have tried several! This may be a stupid question, but can you use the chicken tender batter on bone in chicken pieces?
Keep up the great work.
Lauren Radclif
I haven’t tried the batter on bone-in pieces, but it seems to me that it would work okay. Good luck!
Thanks so much for posting. Your site as a while has been a godsend as I attempt to navigate low sodium living. Initially I was quite sad and resigned to eating class food, but you’ve shown that that doesn’t have to be the case.
I just had a question: how many tenders are in serving?
Thanks again for everything.
Hi Holly. Thanks for the kind comment; I am glad that I can help out a bit.
The number of chicken tenders depends on how big they are. A serving is about 1/3 of a pound of chicken, which could be 2-3 tenders depending on their size.
Do you think I can use chicken legs instead of tenders?
I haven’t tried it, but I think legs would work fine. The cooking time would be a bit longer with legs, but I think they’d turn out great.
I just got out of the hospital having heart failure , and with a low sodium diet I’ve been looking for food I can eat . Just tried your chicken fingers , we thought it was delicious!! Thank you . I want to try the biscuits and gravy next .
So glad that you enjoyed the chicken fingers 🙂
Hey, great recipe. You say Whipping creaming in the description but then say half and half in the recipe. Just curious which one it is, thanks!
Oh sorry about that! It’s whipping cream since it’s a bit thicker.
Can you bake instead of frying! Thank you
I’ve never tried baking them so I can’t be sure. If I were going to try baking, I would probably bake them fairly high or even use convection to try to get them crispy. I am not sure whether the batter will work for baking. If you give it a try, let me know how it works!
How did you figure out the sodium content? I’m really bad with this
I have a nutrition program on my computer where I can build recipes and it will give me nutritional info, including sodium. I’ve also used Cronometer, which you can use for free to check out nutritional info for different foods or build recipes and it will do the calculations for you.