How To Bake Chicken In Italian Dressing: Quick & Tasty Recipe

Last Updated on 3rd February 2023 by

Baking chicken with Italian dressing is one of the simplest and easiest way to make chicken. It gives it a delightfully appealing flavor and makes the chicken come out tender and juicy.

You don’t have to be a professional cook to pull off this dish, and I’ll share with you a very straightforward recipe for chicken in Italian dressing that the whole family should love.

How to Cook Chicken in Italian Dressing

You’ll be baking the chicken after you dress it, and I think that’s the best way for inexperienced cooks to make chicken. It’s definitely the simplest method of preparing chicken, as you can just season your meat and then toss it in the oven without giving it another thought until it is ready to be taken out of the oven.

There’s no stress and little mess to clean up, and you don’t have to constantly keep an eye on the chicken to ensure it is cooking properly, and you also don’t have to worry about it overcooking.

You’ll be marinating the chicken first, though, which helps to give the chicken a lovely imbued flavor, penetrating the meat with succulent juices that make your dish incredibly tasty with minimal work.
Once the chicken marinates and cooks, you will need to season it.

When it comes out of the oven, you’ll just garnish it with some parmesan cheese for a lovely look and some added flavor and texture. You get a perfectly cooked and seasoned chicken without having to learn any difficult cooking skills, so this is a great starter dish for the inexperienced cook.

How Long to Marinate Chicken in Italian Dressing

You will need to put together a marinade sauce for your chicken or buy one already premade. Either way works just fine, and the marinade process couldn’t be simpler. The sauce you use could be one of any number of Italian marinades.

I will share with you how to marinate chicken in Italian dressing and share a recipe for homemade marinade sauce as well.

If you are marinating the chicken in a sauce with an acid base, like lemon juice and vinegar, like you find in Italian dressing, then you can marinate it for as long as 24 hours. If you marinate it for any longer than that, though, you can affect the texture of the meat in a negative way, as its texture will start to deteriorate.

How long can you marinate chicken in Italian dressing for, though? It could marinate for as little as 10 minutes and still do its job. Just know that the longer you let the chicken marinate for, the juicier and more flavorful the chicken will be.

Try leaving the chicken to marinate in a bag of sauce overnight in your fridge and see how great the chicken tastes when you cook it the next day.

How to Cook Chicken Marinated in Italian Dressing

You can follow this recipe for the marinade sauce to start with:

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of lemon juice
¼ cup of apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 tablespoon of Italian dressing
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
½ cup of olive oil
½ teaspoon of black pepper
½ teaspoon of sea salt

Mix all of these ingredients together in a small bowl and then place them into a plastic bag. Add the chicken and marinate in the fridge for as little as 10 minutes or as long as 24 hours.

Cooking the Chicken

Ingredients:

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 cup of homemade Italian dressing (or store-bought dressing)
½ cup of grated parmesan cheese

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 420 degrees Fahrenheit.
Using a baking dish that is large enough to accommodate the chicken, place the marinated chicken pieces onto the dish and pour the remaining Italian dressing from the bag over the chicken.
Bake the chicken without covering it for 25 minutes. Add parmesan cheese at the 25-minutes mark by sprinkling it over the top of the chicken.
Continue to cook the chicken for 5-10 minutes. The chicken is done cooking when it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can add some additional parmesan cheese on the finished chicken and spoon some of the sauce over top of it as well.

One method for making things go faster is to skip the fridge marinating completely. If you are short on time, you can pour the marinade sauce over the chicken while the oven is preheating.

This will still make for a flavorful chicken, and you’ll be able to make the dish in a pinch if you didn’t bother to plan ahead for it.

What to Do with Leftover Italian Dressing Chicken

If you have any of this delicious chicken left after you finish eating, it can be stored in the fridge. It will store well in an airtight container for up to four days. When reheating, you will get the best texture and flavor if you reheat in the oven.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and cook for 10 minutes. Be sure to spoon some of the sauce over the chicken before it cooks, to help keep it moist and prevent drying out.

If you want to forgo the oven reheating method, you can warm it up in the microwave for about a minute and a half. If it is still not warm all the way through, add another 30 secodns to the cook time. Only reheat the pieces you will be eating and keep the chicken refrigerated and stored away when you aren’t using it so it will be fresh when you are ready to eat it.

If the fridge loses power for very long or the chicken is left out at room temperature for more than half an hour, your chicken could spoil.

Overall, I think this is one of the better simple chicken dishes. I highly recommend it if you are ready to try a really flavorful chicken dish that’s a definite classic but also really easy to pull off.

5/5 - (1 vote)

Pauline

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I'm Pauline, a mother of four grown children, my passion for cooking stemmed from the joy i get cooking for my family. I love to try new dishes, especially when dining out but creating and sharing my own recipes is my favourite thing to do!