Easy Broiled Chicken Parmesan

by admin April 22, 2020

Using your broiler to prepare chicken makes for a fast and delicious main dish; this Easy Broiled Chicken Parmesan is done in less than 10 minutes and it topped with a Parmesan, mayonnaise and butter spread with just enough hot sauce to make it indescribable.

I know that everyone is finding their own unique ways to manage this quarantine business. I’m lucky that I have worked from home for years so that part of the routine has not changed but my free time has.

If you know anyone who works from home, you also know it can be easy for them to overdo it and I’ve been guilty of that way too often. I’ve had plenty of 7am to 12 midnight days so I have to be careful during isolation and make sure I do more than bake bread and eat bread and bake more bread and yes, eat more bread…it’s delicious but well, you know…a girl does not live by carbs alone (WHY NOT!).

My distraction will soon be my garden; thankful that home gardening will not be banned. I had planned on a bigger veggie garden this spring and so I’ll have to see how that goes and how difficult getting plants will be. But in the meantime I have lots of spring cleanup to do and I’m chomping at the bit; you know I’ll disappear a bit when that time comes, right?

In Colorado our spring is about a month behind what we call ‘flatlanders’ spring. I’m at 6200′ in a southern suburb of Denver and yes, we could still have snow. I am SO ready but today is not unusual; a bit chilly and blustery so nope, not yet.

In the meantime I’ve been organizing. I’m keep things pretty tidy but that doesn’t mean that the time never comes that I don’t have to reclaim some sense of order and space and this past week it was my fridge, freezer, and pantry. The fridge and freezer were bad enough but man, that pantry took me two whole days!

Still…it netted me and this blog a great dish so while hard work there was a reward at the end. This Broiled Chicken Parmesan is my version of a dish I LOVED when I first moved to Denver 30 years ago. Called Orange Roughy Parmesan, it was a simple dish too; fillets of Orange Roughy were topped with a mixture of Parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, and butter and broiled to perfection. Quick, easy and SO delicious!

My organizing efforts lent themselves to some cookbooks I wanted to stash in my newly organized pantry and of them, I included all of the versions available from The Junior League of Denver. They have several fantastic cookbooks and the ‘Creme de Colorado‘ one from the late 80’s had a lot of dog-eared pages. I remember thinking about that Orange Roughy dish in there and was sad I haven’t had it in years.

Orange Roughy was the perfect fish for me and because it is so mild, it was amenable to many applications. Sadly it was amenable to a lot of people and it disappeared from the fish mongers case when over fishing saw its number plummet and availability was scarce.

I’m a conservationist, not by trade, but in my private life. I pay attention to how much electricity, gas, water and fuel I use for my car and how much trash I add to our environment. So even when some touted that it was OK to eat my favorite fish, I didn’t…I thought the little guys needed more time to renew.

Today is actually the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day; seems appropriate that I would be writing about how I revised a recipe that originally used an endangered fish…even if I did not purposely have that in mind when I made it!

So I forgot about Orange Roughy and this dish and that was a mistake. It is equally amazing in this recipe for Broiled Chicken Parmesan using chicken breast fillets. Testimony to the fact that 30 years ago I was more inclined to follow a recipe in a cookbook and not try to modify it in any way, once the fish was gone, I was done.

I’m sad I didn’t have the same skill then that I do today because as soon as I saw this book and remembered that dish, I knew it would also be perfect with a chicken breast fillet. So many years wasted…but now I can have it every week if I want! How easy is this…these are the steps and you’re ready to eat in minutes (complete recipe with ingredients and instructions at bottom of post).

Chicken fillets are brushed with lemon juice and allowed to sit for a couple of minutes.
Combine the Parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, and butter with green onions, salt, pepper, and Tabasco Sauce.
Broil one side of the fish in the oven for 5 minutes.
Flip fillets, spread with cheese mixture and broil for another couple of minutes.

Yes, that easy and it’s done! Great flavor and quick to the table; pretty much what we all need now…actually what we need always in my book. I have to say I was touched that a blog reader sent me a message this week wondering if I was OK since I had been absent…that was sweet Katarina and prophetic because this dish after a bit of an absence is right up your alley; you and your daughter need to make it stat!

I promised this recipe to my neighbor Emily. She has been asking me for ideas and one of the first ones I gave her was for these Spiced Honey Brushed Chicken Thighs. Don’t let the ‘spiced’ thing scare you any more than the hot sauce in the recipe for this Broiled Chicken Parmesan.

Both recipes are perfect for a fast and fantastic meal. Emily loved the chicken so much she made up a batch of the spice mix since she knows she’ll be making it a lot; you should too! Both of these chicken dishes deserve to be in regular rotation; I’m going to add them to my list of Survival Dishes!

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Yield: 4 Servings