What can you do with boneless, skinless chicken breast? The eternal question. Of course, there are quite a few things you could do with it, like curries or fried chicken for instance, but given the choice, I would (almost) always use thighs. Stuffing it is another option with maybe cheese and prosciutto, but what if you feel like something simple and quick. With butter and parmesan, this otherwise dry and boring piece of chicken get’s the transformation it deserves. While it’s roasting, the butter keeps the chicken moist and flavourful, and the parmesan gives it the right amount of salty, cheesy, crunchy goodness. This delicious dish takes just 10 minutes to prepare and 30 minutes to bake. I can’t think of a better way to eat chicken breast.

Ingredients:

• 3 large chicken breasts, sliced in half horizontally so that you end up with 6 thinner pieces of chicken.
• 125 grams unsalted butter, softened
• 2 rounded tsp dijon mustard
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• salt to taste
• 1 ½ cup breadcrumbs (I use homemade from a really good sourdough bread)
• ½ cup grated parmesan
• 1 tsp fresh thyme (or ½ tsp dried. Dried oregano is also a good option)

Method:

Preheat oven to 210 C. Put butter in a small bowl and add the dijon mustard, black pepper and some salt (use the quantity you would use to season the chicken breasts). Mix well.

Take a little bit of the flavoured butter to lightly coat the bottom of an oven pan. Put the chicken breasts in the pan, in one layer. Spread a generous amount of butter on top of each chicken breast. Use your hands to do this, it’s the best way. Don’t panic if it doesn’t spread evenly, it doesn’t really matter. Make sure you use all the butter.

In a bowl, mix the parmesan with the breadcrumbs, thyme or oregano. Sprinkle the mixture on top of each breast, pressing down with your hand to help the mixture adhere to the meat. Continue until you use it all.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until chicken is cooked through. Serve at once with a nice lemony salad.

Note: You can coat the chicken breasts with the parmesan/breadcrumbs mixture in advance, and keep refrigerated until ready to bake.