Beth wrote:Tonight I'm making spaghetti, too ~ but mine is going to be spaghetti squash with a chicken cutlet covered in mozzarella, like a chicken parm without the breading ~ just a thin cutlet pan fried, topped with a little marinara and then the cheese melted all over.
Would you believe I'd never had Chicken Parmesan until recently? I bought Brian a few of them made by our local grocery, as I figured he could have one of those when I was hurting too much to make dinner. They were made with a pretty big chicken breast but it wasn't too thick -- and believe it or not, they really were good. They came in separate containers with lots of thick sauce and fresh mozzarella on top -- I couldn't believe how good they were. Brian, who'd had the dish many many times, said they were good too!
So I'm going to make Chicken Parmesan tomorrow as I found a "quickie" recipe to use which is what I'm looking for lately -- good but doesn't take all day as I'm just not up to it with everything I'm doing around here and looking after Brian too!
You may remember that neither Brian nor I like ANY of the jarred marinara sauce you can buy at the grocery. We've tried many brands and didn't like ANY of them; most we threw away after heating them. But I saw a taste test on America's Test Kitchen recently and Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce won -- they said it was about $9.39 for a 24-oz. jar but I found it at Walmart (still getting delivery from them to help us out) for $6.28 so I ordered a jar. The marinara that came in second was a brand called Victoria Fine Foods Premium Marinara Sauce, also kind of pricey. I found the brand at Walmart as well ($3.48 for 24-oz. jar though ATK said it was $6.99 a jar)) but they had Victoria Pasta Sauce Slow Cooked Tomato Basil and Victoria Marinara Sauce Old World Style, same price, so I got a jar of each of those. I THINK we might like all three as the first ingredient in each is tomatoes -- go figure!
They tested 10 jarred pasta sauces and focused on sauces labeled as marinara, traditional, or tomato basil and eliminated any containing wine, cheese, vegetables, meat, or cream. The reason I think we may like at least one of those is because they found half the sauces were “borderline inedible” -- their words not mine but that's pretty much how we felt about all that we tried. They said they were cloying like bad barbecue sauce, inundated with “pine-flavored” herbs reminiscent of “air freshener,” or had a mealy, wet texture like “baby food"!
They zeroed in on the first culprit, which was SUGAR! I never put sugar in any sauce with tomatoes, whether canned or fresh, so that might be what we don't like about most of them. Most of the sauces they tasted contained added sugar or corn syrup, for a total of 5 to 11 grams of sugar (including those naturally occurring in the fruit) per 1/2 cup of sauce -- that's A LOT!! We found the 5 or 6 we tried were sickly sweet, more like ketchup's flavor than tomato sauce. Rao's and Victoria that I just bought have NO added sugars and only a little bit of naturally occurring sugar so we're hoping for some tang and and real tomato flavor. The second problem with the bad marinaras was they were made with reconstituted tomato paste with some diced tomatoes thrown in for texture. Can't really make things taste good when you start with lousy ingredients, you know? First rule of cooking I ever learned!
I'll let you know how we like the sauces and how my virgin attempt at Chicken Parmesan comes out. If we like it except for the jarred sauce, then I'll try making it again with homemade marinara. I should probably just make a bunch of sauce and freeze it in small batches if I ever get the chance. Even though those sauces are kind of pricey, the convenience right now would really be worth it!
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