I’m always curious about what others “go to” dinner recipes are. Things that are going to be easy and relatively quick for a busy family. Here is one that I started making a little while ago, and it is firmly now a regular meal in our house: quick, easy gluten-free chicken parmesan (note: we aren’t a gluten free household, but I try and cut down on the carbs where I can).
There are tons of recipes out there for chicken parmesan that look amazing, but you have to make the breading with a bunch of different herbs and things, make an egg mixture to dip the chicken in, do your own tomato sauce, pan fry the chicken, etc etc. I’m sure they are delish, but I am all about the easy and quick cooking.
Here is what I did:
Ingredients:
- boneless chicken breasts
- enerjive italian quinoa bread crumbs (I also added some extra dried oregano + ground pepper)
- parmesan cheese — I used Salerno parmesan
- tomato/marinara sauce
Gluten Free Chicken Parm Recipe:
First up is to get out whatever you are going to use as you breading for the chicken. I came across some quinoa bread crumbs that were already italian flavoured (had things like oregano, basil, sea salt, etc all mixed in). I mixed in a little extra oregano, some shredded parmesan, and ground pepper. The fact that these are quinoa based is what makes the recipe gluten free.
Then I coated the chicken breasts in olive oil. I followed that up by dunking each piece of chicken into the breading mixture and made sure they were really coated. I put them in a dish and poured in a little extra olive oil around the bottom (didn’t want them to stick).
Then I popped them into the oven at 375C. At around the 30 minute mark I pulled them out and poured on some marinara sauce. And then about 10 minutes after that I pulled it out again and topped it all off with a couple handfuls of salerno parmesan cheese – pre grated and delish. Who doesn’t love cheese?
Back in the oven for about 5 minutes and it came out looking like this…
It’s usually just me and Maya at home when I’m prepping dinner, as Dan gets home around 5-5:30pm. We used to eat a little later and then he and I shared dinner prep duty, but with Maya in a new daycare, the timing of her snacks changed and she is pretty ravenous by the time 5:30pm hits. We also like to get her into bed by around 6:45pm instead of the old 7pm bedtime, as she doesn’t nap as long at this new daycare. All of that to say that I usually have a toddler at my feet as I try to get dinner ready. She isn’t really big enough to stand on a stool and help out yet, so I try to come up with little tasks for her to do. This particular evening? After we had popped the bottoms off the asparagus and put them in to steam, she was occupied by taking those bottom bits, putting them all into a measuring cup, then pouring them all out again. Bought me a good 10 minutes. Ha.
And the chicken parm? It was aaaaahh-mazing. So, so good. You would have never known it was so ridiculously easy to put together. Instead of pasta, I had a little quinoa+bulger on the side (I mixed in some pesto for extra flavor) and the asparagus with a little lemon juice and salt. I love it when a meal is healthy AND super tasty.
Oh, and this girl? LOVED it. Made the “nom nom” noises throughout the whole meal. Man is it ever satisfying when that happens (we have our fair share of throwing food on the ground meals, so I’ll take the victory when I can- ha!).
Try this one out, guys. If you can’t get your hands on the quinoa breadcrumbs, any italian flavoured ones will do — just try and get some that have good stuff in them and aren’t packed with salt. Oh, and if you wanted to do a veggie version, I bet this would be just as good with some eggplant!
What are some of your go-to dinner recipes? I’m always looking for more, as we go on repeat here a fair bit! Do share!
Disclosure: I am part of the Gay Lea Ambassador Campaign with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.