Parmesan Encrusted Chicken

So, last night I wanted Parmesan-encrusted Chicken. So what did I do? I hopped on over to Pinterest (figuratively; I don't really hop anywhere. Ever. At all.) Looked up a bunch of recipes. The ones that didn't use bread crumbs or non-fat Greek yogurt (which we don't have) used egg or mayo (yes, mayo. And I can't have eggs OR mayo, since mayo is mostly egg). So, what to do, what to do. Why, experiment, of course! So after asking Jon's permission, this is what I came up with. And sorry, but I didn't really measure anything... I'll give approximate amounts, but they're not perfect.

Parmesan Encrusted Chicken

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I only used 3; you can use more or fewer.)

1/3 cup sour cream

1 tbsp brown sugar

1/3 cup Parmesan cheese (save some to put on top of chicken before you bake it, or use extra for that...)

1/2-1 cup breading, potato flakes, flour, what have you (I didn't measure this, but I probably used 1-1/2 cups and it was WAY TOO MUCH.)

Olive oil

Instead of egg, mayo, or yogurt, I used sour cream. Ours had onions and chives in it. I figured that'd be fine; just adds more flavor. Then I added a bit of brown sugar to sweeten it a bit, since mayo and yogurt are pretty sweet. Honestly, I'm not sure the brown sugar was needed. But I have a hard time passing up using brown sugar. I love me some sugar. Anyway. Back to the recipe. I mixed some Parmesan cheese into the sour cream/brown sugar mix. I used shredded cheese. The powdered stuff would work fine. Or the flakes. Use what you have. Don't have Parmesan? I bet Feta would taste pretty good, too. Next I took some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cut them in half (so the goodies-to-chicken ratio was higher!!) and dried them off, so they were kinda sticky. Next I dunked them in the sour cream mixture. So, remember how I said we had no bread crumbs? I'm sure flour would probably work, but I used dried instant potato flakes. Frankly, I thought these were bland and in the future I'd probably use bread crumbs if possible, but the potato flakes worked. In fact, husband loved them. So, after the chicken is coated in sour cream, put some coating in a bag, add chicken, and shake, shake, shake your booty. Just kidding. Sort of. Pull chicken out of coating, making sure they're coated well; place on a baking sheet lined with foil. I had extra sour cream mix, so I put a dollop on top of the chicken and then pressed more flakes into the top. Drizzle some olive oil and some more cheese on top of chicken. Bake 15-20 minutes at 375 or until chicken is done all the way through. I ended up having to put the oven on broil for a bit, because my chicken wouldn't brown.

We also had some noodles with butter, garlic, and parsley, then added some zucchini and cherry tomatoes. Please, be sure to sautee the veggies separately from the noodles. I didn't; I just dropped these into the noodles after they cooked, and the zucchini was hard and tasteless. The french bread was good, though.