Chicky Parm Bake

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Charlie, our daughter, has been in our lives now for six months. My husband, Ronnie, and I both work pretty demanding careers in sales.

Neither of us plans to give up our careers at this point, nor do I see our ambitions waning. What does this mean? The marathon of Monday through Friday is our new normal, and to be honest between wake up, daycare drop, working out, work, playtime, dinner time, and finally bedtime, there’s not a ton of space in our days anymore. So we have to be pretty optimized to get through.

The weekends afford us the luxury of time, time to reset our home, our fridge, our nervous systems, and most importantly, time for us to spend time doing the things we love – for me, that’s cooking, creating, and writing.

One of my new things is preparing “bakes” (ahem, casseroles) each week, so we have healthy-ish, homemade-ish, dinner options ready to go from freezer to dinner table with absolutely zero effort in under an hour.

I give all the credit to my bestie Tasha for teaching me the art of the bake. She’s the best. 10/10 recommend putting “have a bestie like Tash” on your bucket list.

Okay, so today, I’m going to share with you one of our favorite weekly dishes, the Chicky Parm.

What you’ll need:

Chicken tenders (Trader Joe’s fresh meat section has good chicken and good prices)
Tortellini (Trader Joe’s Four Cheese)
Fresh Broccoli florets
Marinara Sauce (my fav is Rao’s Arriabata)
Olive Oil (I love Graza!)
Bread Crumbs (I use the tin from Aldi)
Oregano
Crushed red pepper (Costco!)
Shredded Parmesan Cheese
Fresh mozzarella (Trader Joe’s has a nice fresh Mozz log)
9x13 Pyrex Dish
Two plates

Instructions:

Step 1 – Prepare your two plates for chicken dredging

Cover one plate in Olive Oil, you will use this instead of an egg wash
Cover your other plate in Breadcrumbs, Oregano (to taste), Red Chili Flakes (to taste), and Parmesan Cheese

Step 2 – Prepare your Pyrex for your Chicky Parms’ resting place

Coat the bottom of your Pyrex with Marinara sauce
Unload the Tortellinis over the sauce
Unload the broccoli over the sauce
Put a little more sauce over the Tortellinis and broccoli

Step 3 – Dredge that Chicky

Grab one of your Chicken Tenders, and place it on your Olive Oil plate, turn it over once or twice, until it’s fully coated.
Drop that Chicky on your bread crumb plate and press it into the crumbs, turning it once or twice until it’s fully coated.
Once you’ve got that fully coated Chicky, you have two options:

Either, fry it quickly on the stove to crispen it up, so that when you bake it later, it has that crispy crunchy to it
Or, simply place it over the tortellini, broccoli and sauce situation you have going in your pyrex.

Continue these steps until all your Chicky’s are coated and have made their way to their resting place in your Pyrex atop the tortellini, broccoli and sauce situation.

Step 4 – Add sauce, mozzarella, and any additional seasonings to your Chicky

Once all my Chicky’s are ready to go, I like to semi-cover them in sauce. I'm a big fan of sauce, so this works for me. You want to have enough sauce that things don’t dry out when you put it in the ove, but you also don’t want it to be a sauce swamp… because, ew.
Once my Chicky is semi-covered, I put fresh mozzarella on top, and then add a bit more shredded parm.

Step 5 – All done!

You are done! Wasn’t that easy?! You’ve now got two options:

Cook now: Set your oven to 375°F and let bake for ~1 hr, until Chicken is cooked through, as a rule of thumb when the internal temp is 165 °F your Chicky is fully cooked.
Put it in the freezer and save it for when you are running around like crazy and want an effortless meal ready in <90 mins. When you do bust it out, set your oven to 375°F and let bake for ~1-1.5 hrs, until Chicken is cooked through, as a rule of thumb when the internal temp is 165 °F your Chicky is fully cooked.

Enjoy!

De Soi

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