Dijon-Crusted Chicken

I got this recipe out of my Taste of Home magazine and man was it tasty! It's definitely moved up towards the top of our list of favorites :)

My spice rack had this spice called Italian seasoning in it. I'd never seen it in a recipe before, never heard of it actually! I used it on a roast just to try it out about a year ago but never used it again. This recipe calls for it and in this mixture it was wonderful!

I only have a couple notes about this recipe. First is that we used Panko for the bread crumbs because that's what I had (and it tastes really good). I'm sure any type of bread crumb would work though. Second, I used 3 chicken breasts and 4 chicken thighs. The seasoning didn't look like nearly enough so I went ahead and tripled it just to be safe and it ended up being just enough. I'll leave the recipe as is, just in case you're cooking less chicken. Same with the Dijon.

1/3 cup dry bread crumbs
1 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 oz each)
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp butter or margarine

• Mix first six ingredients together in shallow bowl. Brush chicken with Dijon and roll in crumb mixture.
• In large nonstick skillet, cook chicken in oil and margarine over medium heat for 5-6 minutes on each side (until center of meat reads 170 degrees).

Another easy way to cook this, since it seems cooking chicken in the skillet always takes 10 times longer than the recipe says, is to cook it in a 9 x 13 pan in the oven. That's how I cooked the chicken last night. To do so, I spread some bread crumbs in the bottom of the pan, placed the chicken in the pan, and sprinkled the remaining bread crumbs over the top of the chicken. Bake in the oven at 400 for 45-60 minutes (my chicken was slightly frozen so it took closer to 60 minutes).