Texas Ranch Chicken

I had a bit of a dinner crisis tonight. I went to start making dinner at 5:30 and realized I didn't have the breadcrumbs that the recipe called for. I ALWAYS have seasoned breadcrumbs on hand, but I did remember I had used the last of them making hamburgers a couple weeks ago. No big deal, I thought I had some panko crumbs I could use. Nope. No idea what happened to those. I guess I could have made my own breadcrumbs, but instead I stressed myself out by finding a new recipe to make. We still had some cheesy potatoes in the fridge, so I figured that could be our side dish. I hate dinner panics so close to when we eat...I try to have dinner on the table at 6:00 every night.

So I turned to allrecipes.com to see what I could find. I had some packets of ranch dressing in the pantry, so I thought maybe I could do something with that. I put in chicken and ranch dressing as two ingredients and searched. This is one that came up and it sounded easy enough.

Texas Ranch Chicken
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken parts
1 1/2 cups Ranch-style salad dressing
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spread the olive oil in a 9x13 inch baking dish.
2. Arrange chicken in the dish, and cover with the dressing. It's best to place chicken pieces close together so that the cheese and the dressing do not burn on the bottom of the pan.
3. Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from heat, top with mozzarella cheese, and return to the oven. Continue cooking for about 15 minutes, until the cheese is melted and lightly browned and the chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear.

*****

Instead of doing the olive oil I just sprayed the dish with cooking spray. The cooking time was more like 45 minutes, and I even started it at 375 and then bumped it up to 400. The boy had chicken nuggets because the chicken was taking so long to cook. Overall it was okay...nothing spectacular.