One of my favorite foods is crispy chicken, so when I find a recipe for crispy chicken I'm eager to try it out.
This dish calls for one of my favorite cooking techniques - dredging. I have no idea why, but I love to dredge.
First you start by crushing the crackers...my tool of choice is a rolling pin.
The dredging station...this step is all about organization (which I love!).
When you see the recipe, you'll notice that I'm missing another bowl for the dredging station...the cheese. (Next time I plan on making the recipe with the cheese, but this time I was also fixing Cheesy Ranch Potatoes and didn't want to have cheese with sides of chicken and potatoes for dinner.) I also didn't use the milk to start the dredge...I used 2 whisked eggs (maybe this is why I didn't get the crisp that I wanted?) You'll notice in the picture below that my chicken pieces look smaller...that's because I used chicken breast tenderloins. I had them in the freezer and that's what I pulled out...it also saved the step of cutting the chicken breasts into chunks.
Here's the final product...
Even after putting the chicken back in the oven without the foil, the top didn't crisp like I thought it would (possibly because I used egg instead of milk in the dredging process...hmm?), so I put it under the broiler for several minutes.
The recipe also calls for a sauce, which I didn't make for the dinner, but made it for the left over chicken. When I made the sauce, I added more sour cream and some milk to thin it out some. (The step-daughter who had some of the left over chicken said the sauce was good...yay!)
Crispy Cheddar Chicken
4 large chicken breasts
2 sleeves Ritz crackers
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/2 c. milk
3 c. cheddar cheese, grated
1 tsp dried parsley
Sauce
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 Tbsp sour cream
2 Tbsp butter
1. Cut each chicken breast into 3 large chunks.
2. In a small food processor grind up the Ritz crackers.
3. Pour the milk, cheese, and cracker crumbs into 3 separate small pans. Toss the salt and pepper in with the cracker crumbs and give a little stir.
4. Dip each piece of chicken into the milk then the cheese and finally the cracker crumbs.
5. Spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray and lay the chicken inside the pan.
6. Sprinkle the dried parsley over the chicken.
7. Cover the pan with tin foil and bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake an additional 10 minutes, or until the edges of the chicken are golden brown and crispy.
8. Into a medium sauce pan, combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream and butter with a whisk. Stir over medium heat until the sauce is hot. Serve over the chicken.
Click here for the printable recipe, thanks to Jamie Cooks It Up!
Cheesy Ranch Potatoes
Now you're probably going to freak out when I tell you this, but I HATE ranch...anything ranch. I always have. I've tried it several times over the last couple of years and have no idea what all the craziness is with putting ranch on absolutely everything you eat. I have my sauces of choice and they are probably ones that you detest...most of my family does too. It's okay, I don't mind being different.
Again, I didn't follow the recipe exactly...red potatoes were $2.49 for 5 lbs and russets were $1.39 for 10 lbs. I'm a bargain kind of girl, so I went for the cheaper, bigger bag.
Spray the baking dish with cooking spray and then start cutting the potatoes into chunks...make sure they're all about the same size, this helps with making sure all of the pieces are cooked evenly. Then add a couple of dollops of butter, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and I added a dash of steak seasoning...it has a couple of more savory spices that I love and give just a bit more seasoning to the potatoes. Then cover the potatoes with foil and pop them in the oven to roast.
After an hour of roasting, pull the potatoes out of the oven and remove the foil. See that little dish? That's my dish of potatoes WITHOUT ranch. I added ranch dressing to the other potatoes, stirred and then added the cheese. Gave everything one last toss and then threw on some bacon crumbles. Put the potatoes back in the oven for about 15 minutes just to melt the cheese.
Potatoes on the top rack...chicken on the bottom
tada!
Cheesy Ranch Potatoes
3 lbs potatoes, diced
dash of salt
dash of pepper
dash of chili powder (or steak seasoning)
4 Tbsp butter, divided
Shredded cheddar cheese
Ranch Dressing
Bacon crumbles
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Spray 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.
3. Dice potatoes and put in baking dish and season potatoes with seasonings.
4. Put the divided putter on top of the potatoes and cover dish with foil.
5. Bake potatoes for an hour.
6. Remove potatoes from oven. Eyeball it when putting on the ranch dressing...you can always add more. Stir potatoes to coat with dressing. Sprinkle cheese (you can also just eyeball this...I think I used about a cup). Stir one more time and then add the bacon (optional) to the top, and put back in the oven, uncovered, for 10-15 minutes to melt the cheese.
Click here for a printable recipe, thanks Mrs Happy Homemaker!
Happy cooking!
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