Difficulty: Easy
I love fried chicken, who doesn’t right? But in efforts to be healthy we tried this alternative. Granted it is no KFC or your grandma’s true fried chicken but it is still moist, flavorful and has a nice crispy crust. As you can tell, we served this meal with mashed potatoes and veggies but Phil & I both agreed we needed something wet, coleslaw will be our next accompaniment. This recipe serves 4 but our chicken breasts were mammoth and you could easily feed 8 if you cut them in half and stay true to real portion sizes, or just use regular sized chicken breasts or cutlets would be nice too.
Ingredients
1 box plain Melba toast, broken into 1-inch pieces
2 TBS vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
1 TBS Dijon mustard
2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp onion powder
A few dashes of Tabasco sauce, to taste
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Salt and pepper
Vegetable oil cooking spray
Directions: Heat oven to 450 degrees. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil and place a wire rack on top. Pulse the Melba toast in a food processor until coarse crumbs form. Spread the crumbs in a shallow dish and toss with the vegetable oil, 1/2 tsp table salt (or 1 tsp kosher salt) and 1/4 tsp pepper.
In a separate shallow dish, whisk eggs, mustard, thyme leaves, garlic, onion powder and hot sauce together. Pat chicken dry with paper towels, season generously with salt and pepper (I am always using kosher salt). Dip one chicken piece at a time into egg mixture and then coat with the Melba crumbs. Press on the crumbs to make sure they adhere and lay the chicken on the wire rack and spray the top with cooking spray. Repeat with remaining chicken breasts.
Bake until the coating is golden brown, the chicken is no longer pink and the thickest part registers 150 degrees in a instant-read thermometer, about 25 minutes. Serve immediately.
