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Amazingly Easy Garlic Cheddar Chicken
This was an amazing dinner! How can you go wrong with garlic and cheese?
I think in this meal I used WAY more garlic than I normally would and it still wasn’t quite enough for my husband and I. We really needed some Fantastic But Easy Garlic Bread to round this meal off!
I think the hardest part of the whole meal was processing all of our dry ingredients in our food processor. The rest was so easy that it’s amazing we don’t do this meal more often.
Chicken is SO easy to work with and it’s so flexible when it comes to seasonings, baking times, and even the sides you can serve it with.
My husband jokes that we should start a chicken restaurant with all of the different chicken recipes we personally use here at home.
And you can see by the pictures, this recipe ends up looking more like gourmet food than a home-baked chicken dish in the oven.
I promise that you’re really going to love this one!
Cook Time
Ingredients
- 2 medium chicken breasts
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 teaspoon + 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 slice bread, white or wheat
- 1/4 cup shredded cheese, (I recommend cheddar)
- 1/8 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 teaspoons oregano
- 1 tablespoon parsley
Instructions
- I would start by thawing your chicken breasts.
- There are several great ways to do this, including placing your frozen chicken breasts in the refrigerator over night to thaw, or placing your frozen chicken breasts in room temperature water to thaw while preparing the other ingredients.
- I thaw mine in the microwave because I have absolutely no patience, and usually make my dinner decisions much too late to thaw my chicken any other way quickly.
- Next preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
- I use a cookie sheet rather than a casserole dish because I want a nice crispy crust on my chicken breasts. Make sure to spray your lined cookie sheet thoroughly with cooking spray.
- In a small bowl, we're going to make your butter sauce first.
- Add your butter, minced garlic, and garlic powder to your bowl.
- Nuke it in the microwave for about 30 seconds to melt the butter and mix everything thoroughly. (It shows up later in my pictures because I had to wait for the chicken to finish thawing so I could use the microwave.)
- Next we'll start the crumb mixture.
- In a food processor, break up one piece of your choice of bread.
- Process it down to the finest of crumbs before adding any other ingredients.
- Add your oregano and parsley to your processed bread crumbs.
- Now add your garlic powder and process them all in.
- Finally, add in your Parmesan cheese and shredded cheese.
- This recipe really needed some more flavorful shredded cheddar cheese, but we didn't have any in the refrigerator last night. So we just used shredded mozzarella instead.
- Process everything together for a few minutes until it is all evenly processed and distributed throughout the mixture.
- Pour your bread crumb mixture into a medium bowl.
- I like to set everything out in an assembly line to make this process easier.
- Start by dredging one chicken breast at a time first in your butter mixture on each side.
- Then completely cover each chicken breast in your bread crumb mixture.
- Place each on your prepared cookie sheet, evenly spaced.
- Drizzle any remaining butter on top of your chicken breasts.
- And then sprinkle your remaining bread crumbs on top of your finished chicken breasts.
- Bake for 45 minutes.
- If for some reason your breasts haven't completely browned after 45 minutes in the oven, switch your temperature over to low broil and brown for a few minutes before removing.
- You see I even cut one breast open to make sure it was fully cooked before serving.
- I suggest serving with a nice salad, or some delicious steamed broccoli and cheese and some mashed potatoes.
- Yummy! Yummy!
Nutritional Information
Nutrition Facts | |
---|---|
Serving size: 1 chicken breast | |
Calories | 452 |
Calories from Fat | 234 |
% Daily Value * | |
Fat 26 g | 40% |
Saturated fat 15 g | 75% |
Carbohydrates 19 g | 6% |
Sugar 2 g | |
Fiber 1 g | 4% |
Protein 35 g | 70% |
Cholesterol 137 mg | 46% |
Sodium 853 mg | 36% |
* The Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, so your values may change depending on your calorie needs. The values here may not be 100% accurate because the recipes have not been professionally evaluated nor have they been evaluated by the U.S. FDA. |
Personal Review
I think one of the first changes I would make to this meal now that we’ve eaten it, would have been to use more garlic powder in the dish.
The minced garlic was great, but I really think that the garlic powder has more of the garlic flavor that we really like.
We also did not have any cheddar cheese, which is what this meal is designed for. Our chicken would have had a great deal more flavor had we actually used the cheddar cheese that was in my recipe.
We’ll have to get ahold of some cheddar so we can try this dish again!
The only complaint my husband had for this meal, was that the topping was so amazing, he wished that there was less chicken and more topping. Lol
I think the only way to provide him with more topping would be to either make some extra for him on the side, or maybe cut the chicken breasts in half through the middle and bread both halves.
The topping already was just crisping off the side of the chicken as we cut into it. It was like the breading on Kentucky Fried Chicken when you bite into it.
The crispy skin just comes off in your hands and you wish there were more of the skin and less of the meat.
Great recipe!! This one’s a keeper!
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© 2014 Victoria Van Ness