I saw the original recipe on Rachael Ray .  Her title for it was Baked Devil’s Chicken-I adapted it a bit for our family.  You may want to look at the original recipe for other ideas.

It is a deliciously spicy, crunchy fried-chicken-alternative.  The good thing is, even with the spicy dijon mustard and red pepper in the coating, my kids DEVOURED this.  And, without anything to dip it in!

Before I share the recipe, I want to share something with you.

The secret to a crispy, crunchy baked chicken is getting it up in the air- lay a cooling rack in your cookie sheet.  Place the chicken on the cooling rack so the bottoms can crisp up!

Print

Crunchy Baked (dijon) Chicken

See Detailed Nutrition Info on

Ingredients

• 4-6 chicken breasts (or any chicken pieces you'd like)
• dijon mustard
• For the coating:
• panko bread crumbs
• dried or fresh rosemary
• red pepper
• paprika
• dried minced onion
• salt and pepper
• *I just eyeball my spices; add them to your taste. Remember you are coating several pieces of chicken. be generous =)

Instructions

1. Set up your "stations" first:
2. a bowl w mustard & basting brush
3. a shallow bowl with coating ingredients
4. Prep chicken:
5. using a basting brush, brush the spicy brown/dijon mustard onto both sides of the chicken
6. dip chicken into the panko bread crumb mixture
7. flip chicken and coat other side
8. lay each piece of chicken on rack over cookie sheet
9. Bake at 375 for about 25-30 minutes, or until chicken is done in the middle
10. Enjoy!

For my spices, I use an organic minced onion from Azure, dried parsley from my herb-garden-pot, my favorite real, Himalayan salt.  Also, I used panko bread crumbs because they do NOT have milk in them; the regular bread crumbs contained milk?  I like the panko- they make for a larger, crunchier coating.

***** For a Gluten Free Alternative: I like to keep the heels of our Udi’s GF Bread in the freezer. When I need to make GF bread crumbs, I just toss what I need in a zip lock bacg and smash with a rolling pin. You can also use dried coconut, or GF oats!

I served this to my family with lima beans and baked sweet potatoes- there were NO left overs! My 20 month old absolutely loved it, as did everyone else.

Do you have a favorite baked chicken recipe?  Please share in the comments!