This 6-Ingredient Baked Ranch Chicken Is a Masterpiece
Everything is better with bacon, that much we all know, but it turns out that everything can be even better with bacon and broccoli. Blogger Julia’s Album, who features easy-to-make weeknight dinner recipes, showed off a super-quick way to get a complete, high-protein, low-carb meal on the table with minimal effort with this baked ranch chicken with broccoli and bacon recipe.
“There is nothing complicated about this,” she says. “All you have to do is add all the ingredients in a casserole dish and bake.” And “all’ the ingredients are pretty simple: boneless, skinless chicken breasts, broccoli, bacon, ranch dressing, and shredded cheese (cheddar and mozzarella). And while it’s not the quickest overall dish to make — the prep is a good 10 minutes, plus 20 to 30 minutes to cook — most of that is hands-off time, allowing you to relax a bit before dinner. She recommends you blanch the broccoli and then chop it, and butterfly the chicken breasts, and of course you’ll have to cook the bacon, but then you’ll just have to assemble.
As it bakes, the cheese enrobes the chicken and toppings in a nice little blanket of meltiness, keeping the chicken moist and holding the ranch flavoring in. The juices run out a bit, but that’s why she suggests serving it over oven-roasted vegetables, potatoes, rice, or pasta, but that it also works as a make-ahead dish for meal-prepping. She also offers options for making your own ranch dressing from scratch if you feel like going the extra mile.
Once you’ve tried the basic version she suggests here, it becomes easy to play with the dish, subbing chicken thighs for a dark meat version, or switching the broccoli with any other vegetable, or even just topping with a few chopped tomatoes, as suggested by commenters.
Get the recipe: Baked Ranch Chicken with Broccoli and Bacon from Julia’s Album
