Preheat oven to 375. Take chicken breast (3 or 5 of them) and sprinle with Mrs. Dash, garlic salt and black pepper (not too much salt). Then bake on a foil lined oven pan for ~25 minutes (cut after 25 minutes and make sure there’s no pink meat showing).
While that’s cooking, I make a pan of instant mashed potato (super simple, just follow instructions on the box).
5 minutes before I expect it all to be done, I throw a bag of frozen green beans in the microwave (about 5 minutes to cook).
Now for what’s great about it:
The following night I put the mashed potatoes back in a sauce pan and add maybe a cup of milk and a little butter, then heat on medium-low until warm. Then I throw in the leftover green beans and chicken (chicken cut into small cubes), then heat on low until everything is warm.
Really easy, and depending on the spices you baked the chicken with, very tasty. I suppose you could sprinkle Parmesan cheese at the end for a little extra flavor, too.
I would suggest a couple of minor adaptations to the instant mashed potatoes (which I also use); one, the box instructions never call for enough milk or butter to suit us. I use half milk and half water (add up the total liquid called for, then use equal parts milk and water instead of mostly water and a little splash of milk), and I add about twice the butter the box calls for.
Ingredients
7 cups Kellogg’s Corn Flakes® cereal (crushed to 1 3/4 cups)
1 egg
1 cup fat-free milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 pounds chicken pieces, (without or with skin) rinsed and dried
3 tablespoons margarine or butter, melted
Directions
Place KELLOGG’S CORN FLAKES cereal in shallow dish or pan. Set aside.
In medium mixing bowl, beat egg and milk slightly. Add flour, salt and pepper. Mix until smooth. Dip chicken in batter. Coat with cereal. Place in single layer, in shallow baking pan coated with cooking spray or foil lined. Drizzle with margarine.
Bake at 350° F about 1 hour or until chicken is tender, no longer pink and juices run clear. For food safety, internal temperature of the chicken should reach at least 165ºF. Do not cover pan or turn chicken while baking. Serve hot.
My notes:
Take the skin off. It doesn’t come out crispy and golden the way chicken skin should be.
You can do this with chicken tenders to make chicken fingers. They’re much faster than big bone-in pieces; I think they’re done cooking in about 20 minutes.
And if you like a slightly sweeter crust/breading (like a honey batter), you can sub out half of the corn flakes with frosted flakes! If you prefer savory, try adding a couple of tablespoons of dry ranch dressing mix to the crushed flakes.
Simmer some chicken parts in salted water for about twenty to thirty minutes. Take them out to cool, and take skin off and the bones out. Dice. Set aside. (Alternatively, cut up a whole roasted chicken, discarding skin and bones.)
Bring a quart box of chicken stock mixed with a quart of water to a boil. Add one diced carrot and one rib of diced celery and simmer about 15 minutes. Take three small cans of biscuits and pinch them into small pieces and drop into stock. Bring to a boil, and reduce heat. Cook dumplings about 15 minutes, stirring often. Salt and pepper to taste. Turn off heat and add chicken. Leave in hot stock until chicken is heated through.
Old trick taught from mother to daughter in my family for about as long as humans have been eating chicken: soak the meat overnight in salt water.
Trim fat, etc. from whatever cut of chicken you’re planning to cook. Rinse well, then place meat in a bowl big enough to accommodate the chicken and enough water to cover the meat, then liberally shake salt over the water.
Use real salt, not a salt substitute. It ruins the meat. I found that out the hard way. Once. Cover tightly, refrigerate for 24-hours or more, depending upon your time constraints.
When ready to use, rinse the meat thoroughly to remove salt, pat dry, and you’re good to go. The salt tenderizes the meat and there is no more dried-out tofu effect. Works like a charm every time and the meat doesn’t taste like it’s salted. I’ve left chicken like that for as little as 12 hours and as long as a few days. The end result has always been always the same, no matter what the cut.
Quick, tasty chicken recipe:
1 to 2 packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts or strips
1 to 2 jars of medium-hot On the Border queso cheese sauce
1 to 2 small jars or fresh-sliced mushrooms (optional)
Rice or noodles, depending on your preference
Spray a casserole dish with non-stick, dump in chicken, then mushrooms, then cover all with cheese sauce.
Cover and bake for an hour at 350.
You can also put partially-cooked noodles or rice down as a bed for the chicken, but I’ve never quite gotten the hang of getting both foods to cook together right, timing wise, so I just do those on the side.
So easy it hardly qualifies as cooking (yet my foodie wife willingly eats it at least two times a month):
Allow chicken to come to RT and rinse.
Sprinkle both sides with garlic salt and lemon pepper.
Place in a baking dish, bake at 400°F for ~40 minutes or until done.
Sprinkling a whole chicken (inside and out) with these two ingredients, then cooking for 8-10 hours on low or 4-5 hours on high in a slow cooker is wonderful, as well. Because the whole chicken is skin-on, you end up with enough juices left in the bottom of the cooker to make a great pan gravy if you’re so moved. Nothing at all wrong with gravy out of a jar, though.
Cover tightly, refrigerate for 24-hours or more, depending upon your time constraints.