Caesar Dressing Is The Must-Try Secret Ingredient For Your Next Roast Chicken
A roast chicken dinner is a perfect meal to please everyone in the family. But even your tried and true roast chicken recipe can grow tiresome after a while, especially if you're laboring over preparing an entire marinade or seasoning mix weekly for a whole chicken dinner. If you're in a bind for time, there's still hope for a flavorful, fulfilling roast chicken. Just turn to a ready-made ingredient only previously reserved for your salad greens: a Caesar dressing.
You may have heard of or even tried marinating chicken in Italian dressing, but a Caesar dressing is creamier and heartier, meaning it'll hold up to the oven and give a desirable velvety coating to help make your roast chicken moist. And since Caesar dressing is so rich, you can even skip the marinating process to cut down prep time even more. Just cover the chicken in the dressing right before popping it in the oven. Your roast chicken will taste way better, and you'll thank your past self for choosing an unfussy, low-mess meal when it's time to clean up.
Tips for using Caesar dressing as a roast chicken marinade
For a quick, easy dinner that's still packed with flavor, it's best to use boneless skinless chicken breasts for this recipe, just like you would use if making a chicken Caesar salad. Boneless skinless chicken breasts will absorb the dressing's flavor fully, and you can even take a bit of extra time to pound the chicken breasts thin. They'll cook faster this way as well, and the Caesar dressing imbues the chicken with a lip-smacking lemon-garlic flavor. If you want to add even more umami-sharp goodness, sprinkle a bit of shredded parmesan cheese on top of the chicken near the end of the baking process. Stick the chicken back underneath the broiler for just a minute to get the cheese browned up and melty, and you have an irresistible chicken dinner.
Keep in mind that many store-bought dressings already contain a decent amount of salt and pepper, so there's no need to pre-season your raw chicken with salt and pepper. If you did, the result would turn out far too salty. Just another perk of Caesar dressing –- you've now cut down even further on prep time.
Caesar dressing can level up even more go-to meals
Once you've turned your weeknight roast chicken into an unforgettable dinner, you'll be stocking up on more bottles of Caesar dressing to see what else that flavorful, jam-packed bottle of dressing can do. With its balance of savory umami flavors and tangy acidic ingredients, it can transform many a weeknight meal, dinner party side, or late-night snack. Caesar dressing creates a next-level potato salad, bringing in all that tangy garlicky goodness to an otherwise bland, creamy, chewy dish.
You can even elevate boring boxed mac and cheese with some Caesar dressing. Gooey, luscious mac and cheese is a bowl of savory goodness on its own, but a bit of Caesar dressing adds more depth of flavor with the lemony and garlicky tang. Whether you choose your go-to store-bought variety or venture into making a homemade Caesar dressing of your own, your roast chicken and other classic weeknight meals are about to get a big upgrade.