Friday, September 18, 2009

he said, she said


Even after making Tyler Florence's Ultimate Chicken Parmigiana and loving it, I still wanted to try Ina Garten's recipe for Parmesan Chicken to see how it compared. In retrospect, it was a silly thing to do. The recipes only offer slight variations so I'm not sure what I was expecting. On the plus side, now you don't have to try both, you can just take my word for it, Tyler's is much tastier. He only adds chopped fresh parsley and garlic powder, but those ingredients must really make a difference. My husband and I thought Ina's recipe was bland. My daughter happily ate it dunked in ketchup, which apparently is how she likes to eat everything right now.

One other note, Tyler's recipe called for the chicken to be cooked on medium-high heat and Ina's said to cook the chicken over a medium-low burner. The time she said it would take for the chicken to cook didn't nearly get the job done. I ended up having to finish it off in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes and I still had the thickest piece undercooked. Even though you have to watch the chicken very carefully to make sure you don't burn the coating in the hotter pan, I think it cooked the chicken much better that way and also helped the coating to stay on the chicken when it was flipped.

We tried two other recipes with this chicken...stay tuned to find out what we had and how our tastebuds reacted...on another installment of Eating Food Network.

2 comments:

krystle porter said...

vanessa, you kill me! i loved your last line of this post!!! you remind me of julie from julie & julia....did you see it?! i loved it!!!

Vanessa said...

no, i haven't seen it yet. i want to so much, but the one night we actually had a babysitter for both dinner and a movie, it wasn't playing. :-( i'm guessing i'll have to wait for it on dvd...