When life hands you lemons, make a mocktail and serve it at prom: Mom Prom Chicken

 Oh lordy, it’s been a season.

Look, this isn’t my first rodeo – I know that the end of the school year is always overwhelming, what with all the extra events and spring fever and cramming in 3 months’ worth of homework in a couple of weeks. What I didn’t understand was how very, very extra this was going to be with a graduating senior and a pandemic. As these things go, Anna’s not particularly engaged with her school community, but there was still just so very much to keep track of: senior pictures, rescheduling senior pictures due to rain, yearbook pickup mid-day, a completely separate day to drop off textbooks, procuring the cap and gown, etc etc etc. Goodness knows these kids deserve recognition and I respect the importance of milestones, but…just….wow. And the emotion.

Actually Relevant Aside: some zillion years ago, when David and I first looked at this house, I stood in front of the mantel and blurted, “I can see my daughter walking down those stairs in her prom dress.” Not having or planning on children, this was a little out of character… but it stuck with me, and as this year wound down I realized that an off-the-cuff comment made 22 years ago could actually come true. Except. You know. The pandemic.

There was an unofficial prom in the works, but for a good number of valid reasons Anna wasn’t interested in being part of it. But she still wanted a prom experience. The solution? Hold one at home. And thus Mom Prom was born. I’ll be the first to admit that this was as much about me needing to do this for her as it was about her having a special event. We hosted a prom-like event in our back yard, complete with multi-course dinner and a dance floor, for Anna and a handful of her friends. It was lovely and she had fun and now my yard looks better than it has in years. I mashed together a number of online recipes to come up with the recipe for the entrée, which is now known as Mom Prom Chicken.  

After looking at approximately one million recipes for chicken rolls, I truly don’t know where all the parts of this came from. My apologies to the original authors and their various family members who shared their family favorite recipes; it’s now become one of our family favorites as well.

Mom Prom Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and sliced in half lengthwise
I large carton sour cream
¼ cup lemon juice  
Fresh bread crumbs (I always find it hard to estimate, but expect to use 3 cups or so)
1 tsp salt
½ tsp dried basil
½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp caraway seeds
½ tsp fennel seeds
¼ tsp white pepper
¼ tsp onion powder
½ stick butter, melted

 Put the chicken between two pieces of parchment paper and pound gently to make sure they’re an even thickness. Combine the sour cream and lemon juice, salt and pepper liberally, add the chicken, and refrigerate overnight.

Coat a 9x12 backing with cooking spray and preheat the oven to 350.

Combine the bread crumbs with all the remaining ingredients except the melted butter. Spread the bread crumbs out on a very large plate or piece of parchment paper (easier to clean up!). Dredge each piece of chicken in the bread crumbs, then roll up and place in the baking pan. When all the chicken is rolled, drizzle the butter over the top, cover the pan with foil, and bake for 40 minutes.

Some of the recipes had you putting a bit of cheese in the middle of these rolls, which would be delightful. Others had you pounding an entire chicken breast to a rollable thickness; clearly those authors had not seen a modern Gigantor-sized piece of chicken, which would take forever to pound thin enough and would probably make you very cranky. I like my slice-in-half method, which is (1) less work overall and (2) means that each breast becomes 2 servings instead of one, so either you can feed your ravenous teenagers or this dish can feed 8 instead of 4. We tried this with dried bread crumbs but preferred the fresh.