Post-mortem: Chicken Parmesan

Be mindful of what you’re doing

This should go without saying when cooking. Dealing with high temperatures, raw food (poultry, in this case), or sharp knives can be dangerous. While I didn’t injure myself or anything, I did make some absent-minded calls which could have had less than ideal results.

The preparation was simple. A couple chicken breasts, coated in a breaded, Parmesan cheese mixture with a bit of mozzarella mixed in. Stick that in the oven for about 20-25 minutes. Get some spaghetti going separately. Pop the marinara sauce in the microwave (mostly because I did not want to dirty a saucepan) a few minutes before the pasta finishes. Combine, and enjoy. Easy enough. This will be cake.

I go ahead and get that all going. Timing things out a bit so everything should finish up at about the same time. Off to a great start, and everything is going perfectly. The pasta is a few minutes away from being done, so I pull the chicken and get a temp on it. Only about 140°F. Still a little too cool for my taste. No problem, just move the baking sheet back into the oven and get the sauce heated up.

Letting the pasta sit for another minute or two, a quick taste test tells me it’s ready. Get these noodles drained, and start plating it up. Initially going to grab the strainer here, which I hadn’t used since we moved in. One of those cheaper plastic things with folding legs. I go to put it in the sink — it doesn’t fit. The legs extend about an inch too far on either side so as soon as weight is applied, it wants to tip over sideways. Thankfully catching this before I dumped the pasta, I managed to hold the lid of the pot in such a way that I could flip the pot upside down (only slightly burning my palms) and drain the water. With the pasta drained to an acceptable level, I put it off to the side after dishing some out onto my plate. Chicken should be ready by now.

Wait — where did I leave the thermometer?

Grabbing the baking sheet out of the oven and giving a glance at the thermometer on the way out, I instantly realize my mistake. The thermometer has a plastic cover over the needle on top. Five minutes in the oven means that melted. Quite nicely too. Crap. Thankfully it was not dripping off the top or anything, just kind of heavily bubbled up into a white blob. Pulled that out immediately and just tossed it into the sink. Thankfully, I had the foresight to not throw it straight into the trash, potentially melting a hole in the bag and leaving a far, far bigger mess to clean.

Things were moving pretty quick at this point. Everything was ready, it was time to plate and get dishes into the sink. Had a brief moment when the chicken seemed glued to the baking sheet, but I did prevail. The final bits cooking the pasta and chicken took longer than anticipated, so I nuked the sauce for another 20-30 seconds to make sure it was good and hot. Got everything plated nicely, little more Parmesan on top — Bon Appétit!

There’s even enough left for another meal!

When I cook meals like this, I near always try to make at least enough for an extra meal to save for the next day or so. Being about halfway through my own portion, I went ahead to start putting that away. Pasta goes in first but.. it’s all stuck together. What’s up with that?

In my haste to remove the melting thermometer from the chicken, it skipped my mind completely to add a little olive oil onto the pasta once drained 1. By this point, very nicely stuck to the pot and itself. Lovely. In a way, that actually made portioning it a bit easier. Just pick the whole thing up at once and move it over. Still, not what I wanted so I mixed in a dash of oil before adding the rest of the chicken breast and sauce on top. Going to be a great dinner tomorrow too!

Timing is everything

One definite area where I notice room for improvement is my timing. I wouldn’t call say time management. Rather determining how long I need to leave myself for certain steps along the way. Last few minutes felt like crunch time. Not the best feeling for me, and can lead to sticky pasta or melted thermometers.

Maybe when I think out my timing for dishes with items cooking separately, I need to add a few extra minutes on. This is something that I think mostly comes with practice. The box may say “cook for 20 minutes”. In reality though, it can easily taken longer (or sooner even), and you’ve got to account for the time waiting for things to heat up, or time spent on the other parts of the dish.

Doesn’t matter, had dinner

Thankfully, even with my mistakes, I was able to recover fairly easily and without any real loss except the $2 thermometer. I can live with it. What I think the main takeaway for myself is here. Just be a bit more mindful when cooking. Some of this comes from lack of experience, but much of it could have been avoided by just paying more attention and thinking things though a little bit more. Still though, I had a great meal, and I gained valuable experience. I’ll call it a win.

I will most likely update this post to include a picture I took of the finished meal. Have yet to determine the exact way I want to include that image as Nikola has some different methods and I want to try a few out. This is merely a placeholder for that image, and my reminder to add it.

Footnotes

1

This is a little trick I learned years ago working in a restaurant. Mix a little olive oil into cooked pasta so it doesn’t stick to itself as badly after sitting for a while.