3 Ingredient simple dinner recipe: Italian dressing chicken

Have you ever looked on the back of an Italian dressing bottle and it says to use as a marinade as well? Italian dressing is typically something we have on hand most of the time so it makes for a very quick last minute meal when we haven’t planned anything for dinner.

I priced everything out at Walmart so you can see the breakdown! Keep in mind location and timing does change these prices and they might not be accurate for you. We have a big family so we buy meat when its on sale and freeze it, making it more cost effective for us. Shop sales and freeze for meats its makes a difference!

Packet and bottle marinades are really core dinner recipe staples for us because it takes a lot of the guessing out of dinner. You can choose a marinade and really build dinner around it. When making a 5 ingredient dinner that actually tastes good its nice to have a marinade that has all of the seasonings you want already included.

This meal/marinade might not be “natural” but when you have a large family sometimes you are searching for cheap, and easy, and tastes good.
If that’s what your looking for keep reading!

The ingredients

For this recipe I used 2 chicken breasts from our freezer. Our family freezes meats to make it more cost effective. 2 chicken breasts is normally enough for our family. We cut them making pieces, we don’t normally cook the whole chicken breast whole.
Adjust the amount bases on how much chicken your family normally eats per serving. The joy of this recipe being so easy is that it is easily adjusted for the quantity.

For this recipe I used the Wish-Bone zesty Italian dressing. This is around $2.50 at Walmart. I like the zesty because it gives it more oomf but you can also use the regular for similar results.

Extra Spices (optional)

My style of cooking is just throwing things in until I like the look and taste. For this recipe I added around a tablespoon of paprika. While I don’t think the paprika taste added a lot to the recipe. I add it while the chicken is cooking. This step is optional but I appreciate the color it gives the chicken.

I cut sprigs of rosemary from my garden and added them in while cooking! (No cost)

For the side of this meal we had some simple white rice on the side.

The Shopping list and Price breakdown

For the chicken we buy the big package. Since I’m only using 2 chicken breasts for this recipe I’m going to divide the price of this package by 4.

The total price of this meal alone is just over 7$! Seeing as this fed us 3 adults with leftovers I’d say its pretty cost effective.

The steps

Step 1: Butterfly and cut the chicken. Put the chicken into a bowl and marinate it for at least 15 minutes. Put enough Italian dressing to coat the chicken. I use about a half cup.

Step 2: prepare the rice according to the package. The rice takes the longest amount of time so make sure you do that before putting the chicken on the stove.

Step 3. Place the chicken in the pan with all the Italian dressing it was marinating in. Add any added seasonings at this point.

Step 4: cook time. Cook the chicken on both sides for about 3-4 minutes depending on the pieces. Add a little more Italian dressing to the pan each time you flip.
I’m pretty extra about making sure my chicken isn’t pink in the middle so I’ll cut it to check.