Chicken Napoli

Hi everyone! Here is an amazingly simple chicken dish that is just bursting with flavor.  This is the first post for my Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner series.  All of the recipes in this series will focus on…you guessed it!  Chicken! 🐓🐓 Hence the name, “Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner”.  And this Chicken Napoli recipe is a “winner” for sure.  It’s seriously delicious!  This very well may be your new favorite “go-to” chicken recipe.

Chicken Napoli is crispy, oven-baked chicken topped with mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, roasted sweet red peppers, fresh basil, MORE mozzarella and sprinkles of Parmesan cheese and oregano…is your mouth watering yet??? Mine sure is…and yours will be too.  The hardest thing you will need to do is decide how many of these bad boys you want to make.  Decisions, decisions…. I will tell you this: Chicken Napoli stays very well in the refrigerator for a few days and reheats really nicely.  It even tastes great cold, chopped up on top of a salad.  So are you ready??  Let’s make this!

How to make Chicken Napoli

Breading station

In order to get that amazing, crunchy crust on the Chicken Napoli, I made a mixture of half regular and half panko breadcrumbs.  The reason I use a mixture of the two is because I have found that the finer breadcrumbs find their way to the surface of the chicken to create a little moisture barrier and the larger panko crumbs stay closer to the top to get crispy and crunchy – yum!  This way you will wind up with the best of both worlds; moist AND crispy oven baked chicken without all of the added calories from deep- or pan-frying.

Then there are just a few little mix-ins to get your breading tasting great: red pepper flakes, oregano, grated Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.  In addition to the breading mixture shown above, you will also need: flour for dredging the chicken and one egg and 2 tablespoons of milk.  Now on to the toppings…

Chicken Napoli Toppings

For each piece of chicken you will need: two slices of prosciutto, a roasted red pepper slice, two-three basil leaves (depending on their size), two thin slices of mozzarella cheese and then some shredded mozzarella cheese, oregano and grated Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on the top.  Oh, little side note, if you are going to buy pre-packaged prosciutto slice – count the slices.  They vary by package and you want to make sure you have two slices per piece of chicken.

OK, let’s get this chicken cooking!

Putting it all together

Pre-heat your oven to 350° and make sure a rack is in the center of the oven. Take your  prosciutto and red peppers out of the fridge (and out of the jar) so they can come to room temperature while you are breading and baking the chicken.  Bread your chicken by doing the following:

1. Slice a whole chicken breast in half lengthwise.  Holding the knife parallel to your cutting board, with the palm of your other hand on top of the chicken, your fingers bending upwards and out of the way, starting your cut on the thickest part of the breast like this.. and then continue cutting all the way through so you have two equal sized pieces of chicken.                                                                                         
2. Dredge each piece in flour. What this means is to just evenly coat the entire piece of the chicken with a light dusting of flour, shaking off the excess.
3. Dip all sides of the chicken in the egg wash (egg and milk)
4. Lay the chicken, one piece at a time, on your breading mixture, then using a spoon or your hands, cover the entire top of the chicken with breadcrumbs. Gently press the crumb mixture onto the chicken so that it adheres well and doesn’t keep falling off – try to get breading stuck to every inch of the chicken.

Once all of your pieces of chicken are breaded, lay them onto a baking/cake cooling rack placed on top of a cookie sheet.  Cooking the chicken like this gets heat to all sides so the bottom will be as crispy as the top.  No more soggy baked chicken whoop!  AND no need to flip the chicken halfway through cooking –  whoop whoop!

Spray the chicken lightly with cooking oil.  If you do not already own one, you may want to consider buying a Misto .  My dad gave me one years ago and I can’t use anything else now.  It’s a refillable spray bottle that you can fill with your own favorite cooking oil instead of using the store bought cooking sprays.  They have a ton of additives and always make a mess out of your cookware – so impossible to clean off!  This way you will know what you are using and it also tastes much better.  I have two: one for olive oil and one for canola oil. Love them…😍

OK – got a little side-tracked there…lol  Back to this scrumptious Chicken Napoli.  Now you are ready to pop it in the oven for 30 minutes at 350° on the center rack.  While it is cooking, get all of your toppings out and ready to go.  Once your thermometer reads 165°, take it out of the oven and set your oven to broil.  Now for the fun part, time to get the toppings on your chicken!  Are you getting hungry??  I hope so, because you are going to be in for a real treat in less than ten minutes!  Let’s go!  Just follow along with my pictures and layer on the goodness… basil, then mozzarella cheese slices, prosciutto and then a slice of the red pepper on each. Oh man…S-T-A-R-V-I-N-GGGGG!

Now, for the last few finishing touches…sprinkle on some grated mozzarella, a few pinches of grated Parmesan and a sprinkle of oregano. Only a few more minutes! Hang in there!!

Now with your oven on broil, you did set it to broil right???  Place the chicken in the oven on the center rack and DO NOT GO ANYWHERE! This only takes about 2 minutes or so, depending on your oven, so if you get distracted you will have burnt Chicken Napoli.  As soon as you see it getting some beautifully golden brown spots on it, get ready to pull it out of the oven.  Feel free to let it get as brown as you prefer, but stay there and stare at that chicken until it is done. 🙄  I hope you are hungry!  Because besides the fact that it LOOKS amazing, and SMELLS amazing it TASTES even better!  Go grab a plate my friend…

Just look at that! The cheeeeeeeeese! Oh my goodness…. and look at this crispy, crunchy, prosciutto…

I truly hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I have and that you want to make it again and again.  It’s so flavorful and best of all, simple to make.  Hopefully it’ll have you thinking that this is definitely a “Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner”  Buon appetito!

❤️, 👑🐝