The Lean Green Bean: Chicken Parmesan

Let me just start by saying that you, my friends, dodged a bullet this evening. You almost got a picture-less blog post! As I type this, dinner is in the oven....baking away. We're having Chicken Parmesan. It's nothing new, nothing exciting, in fact- it's pretty much a staple in our house. This, coupled with the fact that I was almost certain I had posted about it before, ALMOST led to me not taking any pictures while I made it!! But, on a whim....I decided to take them anyways...AND IT'S A GOOD THING I DID! Because when I sat down to review my past posts, I found that I had not actually ever posted about this. At least I don't think I did. If you are aware of a prior post about chicken parm then you're probably thinking I'm crazy right about now, and in that case you can just ignore the rest of this post :) But I'm going to proceed on the assumption that my searching skills are not lacking and that this is not a repeat post.

Soooo, you're in luck. This post will be filled with pictures and instructions as usual :)

Here we go. I don't follow a recipe for this, but here's what I do.

If you're feeling particularly angry, you can pound your chicken breasts thin with a mallet. If you're not feeling quite so animated, you can just cut them in half like I did this evening. Don't be scared to pound though. Both methods get the job done. Come to think of it, you don't really need to do anything to the chicken if you don't want to...I just choose to so that it cooks faster.

So, cut or pound your chicken. I usually remove the little tenderloin on the bottom of each and treat them as their own piece.

For my breadcrumbs, I use a mixture of panko and regular, but use whatever you prefer. I buy my breadcrumbs unseasoned, but for this I add in some oregano and basil.

Dip each piece in an egg, then the breadcrumbs. Some people use flour first, but to me, that just dirties up another dish and I don't really like a ton of breadcrumbs anyways so I don't care that I don't get a heavy coating.

Get a pan nice and hot, add some oil and pan sear to get a nice brown color on each side....or if you're lazy, just one side...no one will ever see the bottom :)