Description

This healthful version of a classic has less cheese but all the flavor.

Transcript

Who doesn’t crave Italian food? I know I do and that’s exactly what I’m making, unbelievable chicken parmesan starting with my own homemade breadcrumbs, just four pieces whole wheat bread, put it in the food processor, toast it at 350 for 12 minutes, it’s super easy so while those cool, I’m just going to get the rest of the dippables for my chicken and I’m starting here with two egg whites. I have nothing against whole eggs, I just really don’t need the yolk here. I just want to keep this coating really light and the yolk has all the fat and cholesterol in the egg so if I don’t need it, I’m not going to use it. To that, I’m going to add just a half a cup of nonfat milk, skim milk. Keeping it light, half a cup of flour, just on a plate here. So I’ll season that up with a pinch of salt and pepper. Just get all the flavorings together for the outer coating which is going to be breadcrumbs. And I’m starting with a heaping tablespoon of sweet paprika and paprika is made from ground up red peppers so it has all those great antioxidants of red pepper and a teaspoon of oregano which is classic Italian flavor. You can hardly have Italian food without oregano, it’s such a distinctively Italian taste and a half a teaspoon of garlic. Garlic power here because I want that essence of garlic to permeate evenly throughout. Just add my breadcrumbs. These are cool now and I’ll just load them into the spices, what a great way to get whole grain and chicken parm. So first going to dip in the flour and each person gets one piece of chicken breast here, it’s about five to six ounces. Then into the gluey egg white mixture and then into the breadcrumbs. So these just go into the oven which I cranked up to 400, it just takes 15 minutes. I can't wait to smother it with sauce and cheese so I’m just going to transfer this to a deeper baking dish and I actually like to eat this just like this because it’s absolutely delicious. Once you get that tomato sauce and cheese on top, it’s even better. You know what that is and now this is my shortcut, I’m using a jar of sauce and it’s one of the staples I have in my cupboard all the time. I just always buy a good quality jar. You can use the whole jar, I like it really saucy, it’s about three and a half cups. Now for the cheese, just sprinkle a little on top, gorgeous mozzarella, you can see this is plenty of cheese, it’s really generous but it’s actually about a third of the cheese you find in some recipes and the parmesan for lots and lots of flavor. This just goes into the oven again for 10 minutes 400 degrees and the cheese will be all melted, it will be bubbling and I can hardly wait.