With both of us working so many hours, we often don’t have a lot of time to spend on big fancy meals -- especially since it’s just the two of us eating them anyway. So we’ve come up with lots of shortcuts for simply, easy meals that look and taste a lot fancier than the preparation would suggest.

Here’s one of our favorites that literally only takes about 5 minutes to prepare: Easy Chicken Parmesan

What you’ll need

• Frozen Chicken Patties/Chicken Breasts (we like Tyson, but any brand will do)
• 1 jar of prepared pasta/spaghetti sauce (e.g., Prego, Ragu, whatever you like. If you have left over sauce of your own, use that instead!)
• Parmesan cheese, shredded or grated
• Mozzarella Cheese, sliced 1/8″ -- 1/4″ (we like fresh, whole milk mozzarella ourselves, but you can use any kind you want. Buffalo, skim-milk, low moisture, prepared slices, whatever works for you)
• Optional: Pasta for side dish (Spaghetti, Fettuccine, Angel Hair -- try the fresh pasta’s in the cooler section of the grocery store. They cook super fast and taste amazing!)
• Optional: Olive oil (or regular vegetable oil if you don’t have olive oil) for the pasta

Before you are ready to start:

First, if you are making pasta to serve with the chicken, get your water boiling and don’t forget to salt it. Don’t forget, your only chance to season pasta is when it is cooking! Make sure you use a big enough pot to give the pasta room to move while it is boiling, or it will stick together.

At the same time, take your pasta sauce and put it in a small sauce pan on medium heat to get it warmed up.

Preparation Time:

If you are making pasta:

Your water should be boiling now, so go ahead and put some olive oil in the water, then put your pasta in. Cooking time will vary depending on the type of pasta, dry packaged vs fresh, so check your pasta package for details. Don’t forget to set a timer!

Making the chicken:

Take your frozen chicken patties and place them on a microwave safe plate. You probably won’t want to cook more than 4 at a time (or can’t if your microwave is like ours!), but that’s OK. Check the instructions on the chicken package and cook them for 1/2 the recommended cooking time for the number of patties. Do this for all the patties you are cooking if you need to do this in batches.

Now take your chicken patties and flip them over. Spoon enough pasta sauce over the patty to cover it, then sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Lay a slice of the Mozzarella cheese over the top. If you want some color contrast and make it look fancy, you can sprinkle some dried parsley or even a little dried Italian Seasoning Mix over the top of the cheese.

Take the whole plate and put back into the microwave, then cook for the remainder of the recommended cooking time (For the Tyson patties for 4 of them, total cooking time is 4 minutes, so we cook 2 minutes before and 2 after).

After the 2nd cooking with the sauce and cheeses, let the plate rest for at least 1 minute before trying to move the chicken and plate it up! This is very important! Otherwise the mozzarella will not have time to set after melting, and when you pick it up it will all just slide off to the side in a big mess. Trust me on this one.

When your timer goes off, carefully dump your pasta noodles into a colander or strainer and very quickly rinse them with warm water, then put back into the pan. (Yes, I know -- lots of folks say don’t do the rinse thing, but after 25 years of cooking I’ve found that doing so helps keep the noodles from sticking together.) Then add about 1 tablespoon (eyeball it) of olive oil to the noodles and mix well -- this, too, will help keep the noodles from sticking together as well as adding some great flavor.

Quick Tip: If you want Garlic Toast but don’t have a toaster oven, no problem! You can prepare the frozen slices of garlic toast or cheese bread in a nonstick frying pan. Just heat up the pan and fry them like you would French Toast, checking carefully until toasted to a light brown then flip over.

Serve your Easy Chicken Parmesan with the noodles and sauce, and you have a very quick and simple Italian Dinner that your family will love. They don’t have to know that you didn’t slave over the stove for hours to make it!