You Only Need 4 Ingredients for This Baked Chicken Caesar
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“It takes how many ingredients?” Whenever I see a recipe that ostensibly requires fewer components than I have fingers on my hand, I feel like I have to click it, if just to see if the author includes salt and pepper on the ingredient list. Salt and pepper are technically ingredients, but including them sometimes feels like including water or heat — because you might need them for the recipe, but you’re probably not going to have to leave the house to get them.
But when this baked chicken Caesar recipe says it only requires four ingredients, it really means it.
This baked chicken Caesar is one of those recipes that’s so easy it’s almost more of a “life hack” than a recipe, like how mixing French onion soup mix with sour cream makes a great dip for parties. To make this weeknight dinner, you’ll just need chicken breasts, Parmesan cheese, sour cream, and Caesar salad dressing. It takes five minutes to prep, and the author says you don’t even need to season the chicken before putting it in the dish, because the Caesar dressing has all the seasonings you need in it already.
All you have to do is sprinkle the chicken with grated Parmesan and put it in a baking dish, then cover it with a mixture of sour cream and Caesar salad dressing. The author recommends a creamy Caesar dressing, and you can use any brand or variety you like. If you prefer homemade, you could also make your own Caesar salad dressing for this recipe, although that would obviously increase the number of ingredients you’d need for the dish.
The Caesar-dressed chicken bakes in the oven for about 30 minutes, and gets a short turn under the broiler to make it nice and golden-brown, and that’s it. Baking the chicken in the dressing keeps it moist and prevents it from drying out, and the combination of sour cream, Caesar dressing, and Parmesan is rich and creamy.
This recipe has all the flavor of a chicken Caesar salad, but without the romaine (which given the past year, is probably OK with me). It’d be great with spinach, though, or a nice side of cauliflower.
Get the recipe: Baked Caesar Chicken from The Cookie Rookie
