“Melt in Your Mouth Chicken” and Parmesan Baked Potato Halves

It is safe to say that I have been in a dinner rut recently. Sometimes I come home from work and the last thing I feel like doing is fixing dinner. Thankfully, I have had a good break from too much dinner fixing because of Christmas, New Years Day and all of the related festivities in between.

One thing that I was beginning to notice before the holidays was that a little pre-planning of dinner goes a long way. If I could just simply think of what the next night’s dinner was going to be ahead of time, I was ready for it when fixing time came. I would really like to get back to this planning ahead thing next week when I have to go back to the real world, so I have been scouring Pinterest to find easy (or even not-so-easy sometimes) recipes to fix on work nights.

I had off today, so I had plenty of Pinteresting time, and I came across these recipes that I pinned a long time ago: “Melt in Your Mouth Chicken” and Parmesan Baked Potato Halves. The chicken was mediocre to me (the husband loved it), but I thought the potatoes were very tasty.

Melt in Your Mouth Chicken Breast: (I halved the original recipe, so this is what I did)

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless)

1/2 cup mayo

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (I am thinking shredded may have been tastier)

3/4 cup seasoned salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Mix all of the ingredients together and spread it over the chicken. Place chicken in a baking pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 40-45 minutes.

My personal notes on this: It really was fine. There was nothing wrong with it, I am just not the biggest fan of warm mayonnaise. I knew this going in, I was just hoping it would miraculously transform into something delicious.

Parmesan Baked Potato Halves (The original recipe called for 6 small potatoes. I had large baking potatoes so this is what i did)

Ingredients

2 large baking potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch slices.
1/4 cup melted butter
Grated Parmesan Cheese
Garlic Powder
Seasoned Salt

Pour the melted butter into a 9 x 13 pan. Sprinkle the other ingredients over the butter. Place potato pieces flat into the butter and seasonings.

Bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. Then let it cool for 5 minutes to be sure the cheese sticks to the potatoes, not the pan (I used a baking stone, which tends to take a little longer to cool, so I upped it to 7 minutes).

Using a spatula, lift the potatoes off.

I loved these. They were the perfect mix of crispy and chewy. It worked out just fine to slice a larger potato instead of halving smaller ones like the original recipe called for.

The other great thing about both of these recipes is that I had all of the ingredients on hand. I did not have to go out of my way to get anything strange or out of the ordinary.