Ranch Chicken, Twice Baked Potatoes & My Favorite Grocery Store!

 So, I’ve had my eye on this Ranch-Parmesan Chicken recipe for a while…I knew I had to try it, based on the rave reviews (even though I changed a few things.)  Cheese?  Ranch??  Chicken???  Yes, please.  I decided it would be perfect paired with the Pioneer Woman’s Twice Baked Potatoes, which I super love (slightly altered.)  Everything was super yummy, the family gobbled it up!

I changed a few things on the recipe, primarily the breading.  I love making the breadcrumb mixture with sourdough english muffins.  Tasty!  For extra crispy breading, reviewers suggest using Panko for the bread crumbs…I might try that next time just to see what I like better…but, I sure love my sourdough.

For the recipe, my way, you need: 6 BS chicken breasts, 6 sourdough english muffins, 6 TBS butter, 1 cup Parmesan, 1 tsp. garlic salt, 1/2 tsp. black pepper, and a jar of ranch dressing (Two jars if you plan on doing a marinade.  I love Litehouse Homestyle Ranch).  Anything else pictured, but not listed…just ignore.  Sorry 🙂

Marinate your chicken breasts in ranch dressing, if you have time…at least an hour, or more.  The more ranch flavor the better, I say!  If you don’t have time to marinade, I might possibly add some ranch dry seasoning to the breadcrumb mixture…haven’t done that yet…but, I’m not against it.

Okay, so throw your ripped pieces of 6 muffins (a few at a time if you don’t have room) into a blender or food processor.  Pulse until its all crumbs.  Add 6  TBS of melted butter, mix.  Dump into a shallow pan or pie plate.

Add 1 cup Parmesan, 1/2 tsp. pepper, and 1 tsp. garlic salt to the bread crumb mixture.  Stir together.

 In another shallow dish, dump your jar of ranch dressing.  Dip the chicken in the ranch, followed by the breading.  Place the chicken breasts in a sprayed pan.  I would use a large sheet pan next time to give the juices more room to spread.  Sheesh!  You would think I would have perfected this before I shared it with you, but the changes are minor 🙂

 Bake at 400 degrees about 35 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.  Done!

 To avoid a million-picture post, I’ll just share with you the recipe for the Twice Baked Potatoes that you see in the background of the picture.  They are insanely bad for you and so yummy!  Recipes below…

And, now…the winner for the coolest grocery store in the world…Harmon’s!  This past week I was invited to come get a tour of the new store in Draper (another fancy one coming to Farmington soon), hosted by Bob Harmon, himself.  To be honest, at first I was thinking “blah…a grocery store is a grocery store…and why would my readers even care about hearing about it?”  Well, check out these pictures and you will see that this is not any regular store.  I’m super sad there isn’t one closer to my house.  No lie, I’ve been talking about this place ALL week to anyone that will listen.  It was amazing.  If you don’t live in Utah, when you visit…go to Harmon’s.  It’s the next tourist destination 🙂

So, here’s Chef Bob up in their Culinary School (upstairs in the store!).  They have cooking classes and this guy is an amazing chef, he made us an awesome lunch.  Anyway, then there’s my mom who came along with me and helped me keep baby Joey quiet throughout.  Yep, then me…don’t look at my belly, I just had a baby.  Then, Mr. Bob Harmon.

So, this is only one of the 4 sides of the cheese aisle.  I’ve never seen so many varieties of cheese in my life.  And, the manager of the cheese section can talk to you all day about cheese, she knows her stuff!

 Everything in their store was insanely fresh.  They do the butchering, sausage making and everything right there!  They are the only grocery store in all of Utah to offer Prime cuts of steak and nobody offers more fresh seafood.  You know that Deadliest Catch show??  They get their fish from that boat.

Bob showing off his assortment of olive oils.  There’s a little bread basket at the top of the display to dip into the different oil flavors.  Yum!

 My favorite part of the store…the bakery.  Does that look like your standard grocery store bakery?  Um, no.  The manager graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and makes beautiful, delicious treats!  The presentation of EVERYTHING in the store is spot-on too!

The second best part of the store, the bread.  This low-carb diet is torture!  The dude below has been a professional bread baker for like 20 years and everything is made THAT day and is so perfect.  There are so many different bread options.

Another favorite section…prepared foods.  Great for those quick, easy dinners.  Look how huge the section is, those aren’t mirrors!  They will let you sample anything and we couldn’t find one thing we didn’t like.

Look how pretty everything is displayed!

Oooh, ooh, another cool thing…the Gelato!  They make like 20 different flavors right there.  Oh, there’s a salad bar in the store, a pizza shop…made in this fancy-schmancy oven with a huge flame, a kitchen supplies shop, a seating area upstairs with Wi-Fi, and an incredible produce section.  You will see fruit there that you have never seen before.  They are super meticulous about their fruits and veggies.  Everything has to be ripe and fresh.  Their pineapples are flown in on a jet the minute they are ripe so they are ready to eat.  No more smelling 20 pineapples to find the perfect one.  There’s like 15 different kinds of tomatoes, a billion choices of apples.  And, they are the only store to offer those jumbo grapes that are actually seedless.  They’re called Holiday Grapes, get them.

 Good heavens, I should send Harmon’s a bill for this write-up.