Chicken Dijon & Lemon Rice

Tonight's recipes will be brought to you by....BUTTER and I'll be doing Paula Dean proud.  Ignore the caloric intake and just go with it.  You only live once, right?!  For tonight's dinner I made Chicken Dijon, lemon rice, and green beans. The thing I adore about these recipes is that they stretch with ease.  My mom and I served this at my SIL's baby shower and it was a big hit.  Great go-to for large crowds when you need to stretch a dollar! I doubled the recipe's below because I wanted not only dinner and leftovers for us, but am planning on sharing the other half with another fam.  I will list the single serving recipe, but the pictures below are of me doubling.

Here we go!

Chicken Dijon

3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (Will make 6 pieces. I told you!  Stretches!)

1 cube of butter

1 clove of garlic

5 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 1/2 cups panko bread crumbs

2 tbsp parsley flakes

5 tbsp Parmesan cheese

First we need to make the "sauce".

Melt butter in a pan, and add the peeled clove of garlic.  Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove and toss garlic clove.  We essentially just made garlic butter.

Add Dijon to a bowl.

Add garlic butter into bowl.  Will be extremely "soupy" looking. 

Stir well, and then put in fridge.  We want these two ingredients to become friends!  They need some time to cool off to do such.

 

Next, get out your chicken.

If you have some aggression to get out, this is the step to do it!  You'll need a Ziploc bag, a kitchen mallet, and one of your chicken breasts.  Be sure to SEAL the bag once the chicken breast is inside.  You don't want to be splattering chicken schmeg all over the place!  Your mallet might have two sides, a flat side and a pointy side.  Use the flat side.  Pointy side up!

Pound, pound, POUND until this baby is flattened!  About 1/4 of an inch thick.

Keep going...

Whoa Mama!  Look at the difference! 

I think a dinner plate size of chicken is a little much for one person, don't you??

Cut it in two.  Now that's more like it!  Repeat with the remainder of your chicken, and set aside.

Next up is these 3 guys.

Measure them out, and place them in a shallow dish.  Mix!

Time to take our garlic butter/Dijon mixture out of the fridge.  Stir.  Looks much better! Nice and thick!

Time to make an assembly line.  Dip the chicken into the garlic Dijon butter first.

Then into the bread crumbs.

Make sure to cover both sides completely.

Place onto an ungreased cookie sheet. 

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 35 minutes, until browned.  If the top isn't browned/crunchy enough to your liking, finish off under the broiler for a minute or two.

On to our next recipe, LEMON RICE! A friend of mine gave me this recipe a few years ago, and it's delish!  One of our faves.

Lemon Rice

2 cups of longrain white rice

4 cups of chicken broth

juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cube of butter

2 chicken bouillon cubes (mash in fingers)

fresh ground pepper (to taste)

I didn't get as in depth pics of these, because it is super simple. Melt butter in a pot. Add rice and lemon juice. Toast for approx. 2 minutes. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil.

Lower temp and add mushed up bouillon cubes.  Mush with your hands!  Go on, get dirty!

(excuse the very weird shot of my hand!)

 

Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until liquid is completely evaporated.  Add fresh ground pepper to taste.  I add A LOT!  Compliments the lemon perfectly!

And for our veggies, I went super simple.  Can't beat fresh green beans in a bag that you can steam right in your microwave!  Added some butter and kosher salt and veggie was ready to be served in 5 minutes flat.

The final product....

Bon Appetit!