Zoodles and Chicken Parm
I don't know anyone who doesn't love spaghetti and chicken parm. It is definitely one of my favorites, but the problem is the traditional meal leaves me with such a food baby, I end up regretting eating it all afterwards. We decided to replace some carbs with some vegetables so the taste is still delicious, but we're cutting the calories almost in half. (Less guilt for that second piece of chicken parm? :/). By the way the kids love all of this as well!
Prep/cook time: no more than a half hour! It is easy to cook both at the same time.
What you need:
- A spiralizer (super cheap at Bed Bath and Beyond, especially with a 20% off coupon)
- Zucchini - depending on how much you need to serve, 2 should be plenty
- Light virgin olive oil
- Chicken breasts-sliced thin
- 1-2 eggs
- Some sort of bread crumbs-go with panko if you want to cut out even more calories
- Shaker cheese (Parmesan)
- Mozzarella cheese-go low calorie here. Look for labels like 1/3 less fat, used with skim milk, ext. Sargento has a great one that is cheap at BJ's.
- Tomato sauce-your favorite brand or go home made. We went with Muir Glen here-organic, lighter, and has a fruitier taste although I will be sharing our home made sauce that is organic and light on another post, very soon.
Preparation:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
- Bring a pot of water to a boil
- Heat up oil on a frying pan (this is key to getting the chicken cooked perfectly-too many people throw the chicken on before the oil is heated up enough)
- Layout all of your chicken parm ingredients (scramble the eggs in a bowl big enough to dip the chicken in and sprinkle a significant amount of bread crumbs on a plate).
- Use your spiralizer to turn your zucchini into spaghetti-like noodles.
Cooking:
- Throw your zoodles into the boiling water and let that cook for about 10 minutes-really just as long as it takes you to prepare the chicken.
- Take each piece of chicken individually and dredge it in the egg, then bread crumbs, then right into the now heated oil. (Note: I do not use flour when making chicken parm, I find it completely unnecessary and it just tacks on calories!)
- Fry each piece of chicken parm until each side starts to brown then throw them on to a tin-foiled baking sheet.
- Add your sauce, shaker cheese, then mozzarella cheese. In the picture above, I really loaded the mozzarella cheese, you really don't need that much.
- While you let the chicken bake until the cheese is melted, you can drain the zoodles and add your pasta sauce. Zucchini holds a lot of water, so you will want to press some out with the back of a cooking spoon for awhile.
Overall, this is a family favorite. Everyone loves it and it is loaded with veggies and focuses more on the protein instead of the carbs, which is exactly what our crew needs! As mentioned before, cooking the chicken parm to perfection is key. It is hard to resist that second piece, but not killer if you go for a second as long as you choose the lower calorie ingredients and keep the chicken cut super thin!
