Here’s yet another boneless/skinless chicken breast recipe born of the health-conscious 1980s. We ate a LOT of chicken breast when I was growing up, so I’m surprised my mom never busted 6-43: Cheesy Chicken Cutlets out for yet another version.
I’m sorry, but it’s ALWAYS seemed just a bit morbid to dip chicken in egg. I realize it’s often a big part of one of my favorite things (fried chicken), but it still always nags. I’ll leave it there–you do the math if you want to. 🐣
I think they force you to include the salad to be able to claim “healthy” for this recipe–otherwise it’s essentially just low-carb/high-protein/gluten-free fried chicken.
Which, up until now, I had thought I invented–back in the mid-aughts when I (and everyone else) was doing the low-carb thing and calling it the Atkins diet instead of keto, I figured out how to make killer fried shrimp using essentially the same method they’re using here.
Ingredients. Went with the red wine vinegar and some leafy lettuce that came from our CSA box. Everything else is legit (even the chicken breasts, which I usually sub thighs for).
Chopped up the lettuce. Sometimes I miss having to break down and clean 4 dozen heads of lettuce in an hour while simultaneously putting out lunch tickets and making bread for an entire restaurant…but not often.
Washed & dried my lettuce in my spinner.
Sliced my tomatoes too thick and then took a poorly lit picture of them. 👍
There’s far too many pictures of the construction of this inconsequential and frankly pathetic salad.
I somewhat thawed the chicken in the microwave, but just enough to work with it. This isn’t exactly best practice, but I thought I’d be honest. Ideally, you’d want to thaw these in the sink with cold water or in the refrigerator ahead of time.
Rolled them up to marinate. The olive oil is why they want you to leave it at room temperature, otherwise it coagulates and doesn’t do its job.
Mixing the egg and Parmesan–again, this is essentially a great batter for low carb/high protein/gluten-free fried food. It works great on shrimp, chicken, and probably anything else you want to try.
Browning the battered chicken in butter cut with a bit of canola oil to keep it from burning too quickly.
Finished up my sad salad.
Gave the pieces of chicken a quick run through a 350°F oven for about 10 minutes on a Silpat just to make sure they were cooked all the way, given the warnings on the card and my own dubious meat handling choices. This also crisps them up even more, which helps in that faux-fried-chicken thing we’ve got going here.
Final plate, with that scrumptious green salad. The chicken itself was actually pretty dope, but I could pass on the sad salad next time.
Grade: B+
