Tasty Tuesday: Walnut-Crusted Chicken Breasts

Welcome to our first official "Tasty Tuesday"! 

As part of our new family health journey, Wes and I decided to pick at least one new recipe each week, with the hopes to build a decent list of some new favorite healthy family recipes. Poor Wes, as the chef in the family, he has to please all four of us at the same time, which is not an easy thing to do! So we figured, that if we try something new each week and find more healthy meals that work for all of us, it would be like striking GOLD, so why not share!

With our busy schedules, Sunday's usually end up being the best day for us to try something new, so we figured that we should be able to get our act together enough to post about it by Tuesday. Ergo, Tasty Tuesday! Mostly because that's when we go grocery shopping, plan our meals and have more time to spend in the kitchen if we need it. This first recipe though is definitely one of our favorites and takes very little time to make.

Walnut-Crusted Chicken Breasts

Walnuts add a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids to bread crumbs, which keeps the chicken really moist and yummy! Plus, you can convince your kids that these are like chicken fingers or chicken nuggets. If your kids are like ours, and you call it "Walnut-Crusted Chicken" they won't touch it. But if you call it "Nutty Chicken Fingers", it's a different story.  Also, if you bake or roast the chicken, you get a pretty crispy crust without adding extra fat. If you don't have day-old bread, you can just lightly toast some fresh bread to use instead, or Panko bread crumbs (which is what we do most of the time).

What You'll Need

• 2 slices day-old whole-wheat bread/or Panko bread crumbs
• 1/3 cup walnuts
• 2 tablespoons finely grated Parmesan cheese
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 large egg white
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts halves (6 - 8 ounces each)
• 1 tablespoon grapeseed oil
• Lemon slices, for serving

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a food processor, combine bread, walnuts, Parmesan cheese and 1/4 teaspoon salt; then season with pepper. Transfer that into a shallow bowl.

Pat the chicken dry with a paper towel (this just helps the coating to stick better). Season both sides of the chicken with salt and pepper. Dip each chicken breast into the egg white to coat it completely, and let the excess drip off before coating it in the crumb mixture. (We usually press it on to make it stick).

The original recipe said to heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat and cook the chicken until lightly browned on one side, then flip and transfer skillet to the oven. We tried that and it works but to be honest, with two full time jobs and two kids we are all about streamlining the process! So we usually just bake the chicken. Serve with lemon slices if you are trying to be fancy-smancy. Enjoy!

I have to say though, that my favorite part of this meal is that you can use the leftovers for a great salad for lunch the next day!