How Long Should We Fry These For???

During the third week of our product development project we began making the prototypes of the product we decided on making, which is the flaming chicken cheese sticks. We tried different chicken cheese stick sizes as well as different variations in coatings, cook times and cooking temperatures. We formed the chicken cheeses stick with our hands to begin with, however the uniformity of the sticks was not good. Therefore, we tried the extruding attachment of the KitchenAid bowl mixer. We really liked the product that was formed with the extruder, because it gives us a more uniform product, which will give us a higher product yield. The different coatings we tried were double breaded and single breaded. The single breaded product was first pre-dusted in a spicy chicken batter, dipped in an egg wash, and then coated with crushed hot Cheetos. The first two steps were completed twice before coating with the Cheetos on the double breaded product. The product that had the most flavor and had a better overall texture was the extruded double breaded product. As well as the extruded products, there was also a ball shaped product tested. The ball shaped product was uniform in flavor as well as texture. We still haven’t decided which prototype we are going to go with. We are now testing different functional ingredients to see what benefits our product the most as well as two different cooking methods. The first would be to fry the product and the second would be to bake the product. The optimum time and temperature for both is still being tested, so that the integrity of the product is not compromised. This week has been a very productive week and heading into the next week of our product development we feel confident in our product.