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Chicken Parmigiana is a classic Italian chicken recipe that has bread crumb coated chicken breast cooked in a delicious tomato sauce that can be loaded with vegetables. Pair this with a Greek pasta salad or a broccoli salad and you have dinner!
Chicken Parmigiana
This Chicken Parmigiana recipe is SO easy to tweak to your liking. The vegetables that you can add are endless ; this time of year however zucchini is my top choice. You can add in mushrooms, carrots, celery, whatever you have in the fridge and need to use up! It may not be traditional to add all sorts of vegetables willy-nilly, but it is such a great way to reduce food waste and not to mention get additional vegetables in your meal. If you want another delicious chicken parmigiana version, try my Chicken Parmesan Casserole!
Chicken Parmigiana Tips and Tricks
- Frying the Vegetables
When you choose your vegetables you will have to fry them first. Zucchini has a lot of water content ( as do mushrooms and other squash) so you can quickly pan fry the vegetables in some butter to get rid of the moisture. You want to cook them down and release the moisture. If using really hard vegetables like carrots and onions that won’t cook fast in a sauce, you will want to pan fry them until they are completely cooked.
Alternatively you can add in frozen vegetables that are defrosted, whatever you desire!
- Prep the Chicken Breasts
For the fasted baking times you want to pound the chicken with a meat mallet until it is around 1/2 inch thick or so, making the chicken breasts thinner means they will cook faster!
- Prepare Ahead of Time
You can make the sauce ahead of time and then use it on the chicken. The chicken breasts will get soggy so you need to make them the day of. To save time you can also use jarred sauce, I won’t tell anyone!
How to Make Low Carb Chicken Parmigiana
If you want to make this lower in carbs try these tips:
- Leave off the breading (that’s not traditional, but hey, still delicious!) and fry the chicken breasts in butter until they are golden brown on the outside.
- Leave the sugar out of the sauce as well, you can replace with another low carb sweetener if you want.
- Use only low carb vegetables like zucchini, mushrooms or even cauliflower.
More Delicious Chicken Breast Recipes:
- Pan Fried Spinach Cream Cheese stuffed chicken breasts
- Oven Baked Fried Chicken
- Mushroom Soup Chicken and Rice Casserole
Happy cooking everyone!
Love,
Karlynn
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Chicken Parmigiana
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts pounded until 1/2 inch thick
- 1 cup bread crumbs
- 3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 large egg
- 1 tablespoon butter for frying
Sauce Ingredients
- 28 ounces can crushed tomatoes
- 2 teaspoons oregano
- 1 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoons onion powder
- 1-2 cloves minced garlic
- 3 cups chopped vegetables zucchini works perfectly
- 1-2 cups mozzarella cheese
Instructions
Frying the Vegetables
- Take 1-2 tbsp of butter or olive oil and fry your chosen vegetables. For hard vegetables like carrots and onions, fry until tender, as they will not cook further in the sauce. For other vegetables cook until they have release a lot of their moisture so your sauce won't be watery.
Coat the chicken breasts
- Preheat your oven to 350 °F.
- Pound the chicken breasts until they are about 1/2 inch thick.
- Combine the crumb coating ingredients.
- Pat dry your chicken breasts, then dip into the egg, then dredge through the flour mix.
- Fry them up in the butter until both sides are golden brown. You aren’t cooking them completely at this time, just giving them a nice crispy coating.
Making the sauce
- Start combining everything for the sauce.
- When the vegetables are done, add them into the sauce.
- Place your sauce in a baking dish that will fit all 4 chicken breasts in one layer. Place the chicken breasts on top of the sauce.
- Bake until the chicken reaches a temperature of 155 °F
- At this point add on the mozza cheese. Continue to bake until the cheese is golden brown on top, and the chicken reaches 165 °F.
- Plate with the sauce and enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
This post has been updated from 2010 with new photos and corrections.
Isabelle @ Crumb says
Looks fantastic! I love the addition of all those gorgeous chopped, roasted vegetables to the sauce… much healthier than the usual chicken parm recipes I’ve seen, and with loads more flavour too, I’ll bet.
Karlynn says
It’s a family favorite, the vegetarian boy gets loads of veggies and we get chicken and loads of veggies. It’s win-win! One gets very innovative when it comes to adjusting recipes to up the health factor. Those kids are a’ training me!