Quick and Easy Mexican Chicken

What a day. My avocados were finally ripe yesterday (yes, I know you can speed up the avocado ripening process), so I made Tortilla Pie. It was yummy. I'm too lazy to do a second post on it right now. I need to update our family blog later tonight, and the thought of that is daunting because it's been awhile, so I need to conserve my blogging energy. And it's been a long day. The grand idea I had for the boy's birthday party next month bombed because I called about it too late. And we made the decision to give our dog away. We had decided it awhile ago, and she's been staying at my mom's house, but the time had come to find somewhere else for her to go. I could use a few cocktails, to say the least.

I had meant to start getting the chicken I was going to roast ready to go around 4:00. I looked at the clock at 4:30 and went, "D'oh!" I thought of this recipe I had slated for Sunday night and at first had a minor freak out because I had used all the salsa in the Tortilla Pie. Then I remembered I had some in the pantry. Phew! Jen B. had made this chicken recipe awhile back and really liked it, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's from allrecipes.com.

Quick And Easy Mexican Chicken
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 cup salsa
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 clove garlic, minced
1 pinch salt
1 pinch ground black pepper
1 pinch ground cumin

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

Heat a greased skillet to medium. Rub chicken pieces with garlic, salt, pepper and cumin to taste and add to hot skillet. Cook until brown on both sides and no longer pink (10 to 15 minutes).

Transfer meat to 9 x 13 inch baking dish or casserole dish, top with salsa and cheese and bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 15 to 20 minutes (until cheese is bubbly and starts to brown.) Serve over rice or buttered noodles.

*****

Sounds totally easy and should be good. And if we like it, it will be easy to have again because these are all things I always have on hand. I'm making a rice dish with it from the cookbook my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas; I'll post that separately.

(I'm embarrassed to admit I never hit the Post button last night after typing this out. Oops!)

*****

This was AWESOME. Definitely a keeper and also probably one of my all-time favorite ways to cook chicken. I was out of garlic, so I put all my chicken on a cutting board and sprinkled with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cumin. I love the smell of cumin when it's on something that's cooking. On its own, I think it smells like BO, but cooking it smells great. This was super easy to make, too. The boy doesn't like spicy, so I just put cheese on his chicken breast and skipped the salsa because the salsa I had was medium, and I didn't think he'd dig it.

You could probably skip the oven step and top the chicken breasts with the salsa and cheese in the skillet, then cover and let the cheese melt. This didn't occur to me at the time. Darn, I could have saved myself a pan to clean.