If you eat a chicken breast and a side (i.e. pasta, mashed potatoes, etc) and are satiated then this recipe makes dinner for about 3 people. Adjust that as needed for how much food you can willingly stuff in your face before you feel physical pain.
Ingredients:
- 3-4 chicken breasts
- 3-5 Roma tomatoes
- Lil bit of red onion if you please
- Fresh Basil
- Fresh garlic (2-infinity cloves)
- Fresh mozzarella (enough)
- 2 Tablespoons of Balsamic vinegar
- Balsamic glaze (available next to the Balsamic vinegar in whatever aisle has both of those things)
- 1/2 tsp of salt
- 1/2 tsp of pepper
- Italian seasoning (Optional)
- Onion powder (Optional)
- Garlic powder (Optional)
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 375
- Chop your tomatoes into lil cube guys
- If you like red onion and decided that was the move then chop that shit up too
- Peel the garlic cloves, crush them with the side of your knife then mince that up real nice like
- Grab your basil, slap that shit, let’s get the aromas FLOWING. Then chop it on up. (I bought a whole plastic container of basil at Giant Eagle and chopped the whole thing but you have eyeballs I’m assuming so chop up whatever you think is enough, nothing terrible will happen if its a little more or a little less)
- Throw all of that in a bowl with some room for tossing
- Add your balsamic vinegar, 1/4 tsp of the salt and 1/4 tsp of the pepper
- Mix that up
- Clean your chicken breasts
- Season them with the remaining salt & pepper
- In addition to the salt and pepper I seasoned the chicken with onion powder, garlic powder and italian seasoning-measured with my common sense
- Lay the seasoned chicken in a baking dish, make the dish small enough to accomodate all the chicken without an excessive amount of extra room
- Cover the chicken with the tomato mixture
- Layer on the fresh mozz (I had like 4/5ths of a ball of fresh mozz pearls in my fridge that I cut up and used and it worked fine)
- Bake for about 35 min.
The cooking time will be dependent on a bunch of variables but the most important is the thickness of the breasts. I used thin-mid sized breasts and 32 minutes probably would’ve been ideal, they were slightly drier than I would like after 35 min.
How to Serve:
I served mine with angel hair protein pasta …
- When there was 10 minutes left to go on the chicken I started the water for the pasta
- I threw a massive amount of butter and additional minced garlic into a pan and sauteed the garlic while the butter melted
- When the pasta was strained I added the butter/garlic mixture
- Then I seasoned the pasta with onion/garlic powder, garlic salt, crushed red peppers but most importantly I drained the juice from the bruschetta baking dish into the pasta for some more flavor.
- Slapped the chicken on that pasta and then for a finishing touch I drizzled the chicken/pasta with the balsamic glaze and some fresh basil.
Notes:
I had excess bruschetta topping left over. I diced 4 normal sized Romas and probably less than half a cup of red onion (I love red onion but didn’t want it to be an overwhelming flavor).
If I were cooking this again with similar portions I probably would only need 3 Romas and 1.5 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar.
And as usual I used an excessive amount of garlic: 4 cloves just for the bruschetta mixture (instead of a more normal 2-3 cloves) and then a bunch more for the pasta lol so do with that what you will.
