Sarah's Easy Italian Chicken with Noodles

One day my daughter was just in the mood to fix herself something for lunch. She cut a chicken breast into bite sized pieces and cooked it in a skillet. She boiled some egg noodles. It was at this point she asked me for help. Noodles and chicken seemed a little plain. "What do I do for like, a sauce?" She asked.

We rummaged around in the cabinet and pantry for ideas and options. Tomato soup to the rescue! We added the can of condensed tomato soup, half a can of water, a decent sprinkling of Italian seasoning, and voila! We had the dish you see above. It was very good and so surprisingly simple. I told my daughter I had to add this to the Quick and Easy recipe blog so here it is in a more traditional recipe format:

• 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
• 1 to 1-1/2 cups dry egg noodles
• 1 can condensed Tomato Soup
• Water
• Italian seasoning to taste (about 1 tsp)

Put about 2 quarts of water into a 3 qt sized saucepan. Add a pinch of salt and put a lid on it and bring it to boiling. Carefully add the dry egg noodles. They'll take about 10 minutes to cook.

While the noodles are cooking, cut up the chicken breast into bite-sized pieces. Saute in a frying pan (about 10" diameter or so will work just fine.) We used a nonstick pan, but if you don't have a nonstick pan, you might want to add about 1/2 TBSP Olive Oil or vegetable oil to the pan. Cook until done.

Add the tomato soup and half a can's worth of water. Sprinkle on the Italian seasoning and mix well.

Drain the noodles and return them to the saucepan.  Add the chicken and soup mixture to the noodles and stir.

OPTIONS:

*If you want the recipe to be more creamy in consistency, you could add about 1/4 cup of sour cream at the very end. Do not allow the mixture to boil if you add sour cream.

*You could also use canned chicken breast for this and completely skip the saute step.  

*You could try this recipe with ground beef, but replace the tomato soup with cream of mushroom soup. Don't add Italian seasoning, but you could use something like 1/2 of a dry onion soup packet. It would probably turn out like a homemade Hamburger Helper.

Fried Chicken Recipe

Sometimes I've paid over $2 for some kind of chicken coating. You've seen homemade Shake N Bake before, but I think this is even better. I really liked it. However, this recipe is for frying in oil, not for baking in the oven. I haven't tried it for oven baking *yet.* But I suppose it would be good cooked in the oven too.

Even "Mr. Picky Eater" (our 6 year old son) liked this very much. So this is a winner.

2 tsp Garlic Powder (or to your taste)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1/2 C seasoned bread crumbs (I used Italian seasoned bread crumbs) 
1 C all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (pounded thin)
1 C oil for frying (or as needed. I usually use Canola Oil for this, but Vegetable Oil is fine too. Many people say Peanut Oil is the best, but I haven't tried it at home)

In shallow dish, mix:

• garlic powder
• pepper
• salt
• paprika
• bread crumbs
• flour

In a separate dish, whisk the milk and egg together.

Heat oil to 350 degrees, dip the chicken into the milk and egg mixture, then into the dry. You can toss the chicken around in the dry mixture until it's coated, or you can use a gallon Ziploc-style bag.

Cook for approximately 5 minutes each side, or until juices run clear.

TIPS:

To make sure the oil is at the right temperature before you begin cooking, you can use a meat thermometer for that (without a meat thermometer, I sprinkle a drop of water carefully into the oil to make sure it "pops" and dissipates quickly. If it doesn't dissipate almost immediately, then your oil is not hot enough. Using oil that's not hot enough will give you greasy chicken.

Use a meat thermometer and make sure your chicken gets to 165 degrees.

To save money, instead of using a ziploc-style bag, when you use up a loaf of bread, shake out and fold up the plastic bread bag and keep it in your kitchen cabinet for this use. It works great for tossing the chicken pieces into the coating!

Use tongs to handle the chicken in the pan. Tongs give you a lot better control and keeps the chicken looking nice. You can find these often at the dollar store, so there's no reason not to get them if you don't have some yet. They are very handy for serving salads too.

While the chicken's cooking, prepare a plate with a couple paper towels on it. When the chicken is done, hold it over the pan to allow more oil to leave the chicken. Place chicken on the paper towels and the towels will absorb even more of the grease.

Easy Oven Baked Chicken Parmesan

1 lb chicken breasts, medium thickness
1 egg, slightly beaten
3/4 cup Italian seasoned dry bread crumbs
1 (26-28 oz) jar spaghetti sauce*
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray a 9x13" baking dish with a non stick cooking spray.Dip chicken in egg and roll in bread crumbs. Arrange chicken in baking dish. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes. Pour spaghetti sauce over chicken, then top with cheese. Bake additional 10 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked. Serve over pasta.

*If you find out that you don't have any jarred spaghetti sauce, you can make this version -

Mix:

1 12-ounce can tomato paste (or two 6-oz cans)
2 cups water
1-1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp pepper

This is basically the same sauce from the Lasagna recipe. If you want the sauce to be more like Ragu, add about 1/2 tsp of sugar or to taste.

I have also halved this sauce recipe for chicken parmesan and it's come out fine. This is especially the way to go if you don't like so much sauce (or in my case, when you find you only have 1 little ol' can of tomato paste - OOPS! - so I was pretty much forced to do this, but there was enough.

To halve it, use:

1 - 6 oz can tomato paste
1 cup water
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp pepper

Crispy Herb Coating for Chicken

2 cups of a plain (no name is fine) corn flakes cereal* (non sweetened variety of course)
- Crush the corn flakes to make 1 cup.
2 tsp dried basil leaves, crushed
1 tsp dried oregano leaves, crushed
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp pepper
1-1/4 lbs (approximately) boneless, skinless chicken breasts
You can cut the chicken breasts into 1-2" wide strips if you want.

Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix crushed cereal and seasonings in a small bowl or plastic bag. Spray a pan with vegetable oil. (You can spray with Pam or put a little vegetable, canola, or olive oil on a paper towel and use that to coat your baking pan)

Use mixture to coat about 1-1/4 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Place chicken pieces (1-2 at a time, depending on size) into bag with seasoned crumbs. Shake to coat.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes or until done.

*Always grab a box of the no-name or store brand corn flakes when they go on deep discount. It's handy for a lot of recipes like this one.

Orange Chicken

You will need:

4-6 skinless boneless chicken breasts
1 cup orange marmalade
2 Tsp Liquid Smoke (this is a brand name, it comes in a bottle and will be located on the condiment aisle in the grocery store)
2 Tsp Soy Sauce

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Lay chicken breasts in a 9x13 or larger pan. You don't need to grease the pan (yay!)
In a medium bowl, mix the next 3 ingredients together well.
Pour the marmalade/liquid smoke/soy sauce mixture over the chicken breasts to coat.

Bake for 30 minutes.
I usually bake it at 400 for 30 minutes, then I turn off the oven and let it sit in there for 10 minutes more - but I tend to be paranoid about food safety and I cannot for the life of me find the meat thermometer.

I find this goes well with green beans and a salad, or you can fix something like Chicken flavored Rice A Roni.

Honey Mustard Baked Chicken

This simple recipe for Honey Mustard Chicken comes from my friend and neighbor.

Mix equal parts Dijon or spicy brown mustard and honey. You can also throw in some orange zest and dill to taste if you like.

Slather boneless skinless chicken breasts (or whatever you like) with the honey mustard and pour a little extra in the pan for moisture.

Bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes depending on the size of the chicken.

Oven chicken packets

Quick and easy, these chicken packets are perfect for this recipe blog! I didn't have full-size boneless chicken breasts on hand, but I did have frozen chicken breast tenderloins. I just put 2-3 of the tenderloins in each packet, and it came out perfectly. How did it taste? Well, Hubs ate 3 packets. What does that tell you? :) The vegetables come out perfectly steamed and everything very tasty!

The recipe doesn't say how many potatoes, how many carrots, etc. I cooked 4 packets, so in parentheses I've put how many of each I used.

You'll need:

Heavy duty aluminum foil
Onion slices (I used 1 medium onion)
Sliced carrots (I used about 3 medium-sized carrots)
Sliced potatoes (I used 2 medium sized potatoes but 3 might have been better)
Yellow squash, sliced (optional, I didn't use squash and it came out fine)
Salt
Pepper
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast per packet.

Lay out one big square of foil for each person and chicken packet. Layer chicken, onion slices, carrot slices, potato slices, squash slices. Salt and pepper lightly. Fold the packets tightly or they will drip.

Cook for 1-1/2 hours or until done in a 300 degree oven. Yes, you read this right...300 degrees.

No need to use a pan, just lay these directly on the oven rack.