When I was younger I had a friend who always poured ranch dressing on the side of her plate when eating chicken. She would dip each piece of chicken in the ranch dressing before eating it. At the time I thought this was strange, but I guess it‘s no different than dipping a French fry in ketchup.
I decided to try dipping my chicken pieces in Italian dressing and found it to be quite delicious. Then when I was visiting my sister and we had to cook dinner for our children, we came up with a new way to flavor the chicken using salad dressing.
The first thing we did was cut our boneless chicken breasts up into little bite-sized cubes. You can, however, cut the chicken into strips or even leave it as a whole breast. After that, we poured salad dressing in one bowl and bread crumbs in another. I used plain bread crumbs because I wanted the flavor to come from the dressing, but you can use flavored bread crumbs if you want.
To trap the flavor of the dressing in the chicken bites we first dipped them in the dressing, and then into the bread crumbs. We heated up vegetable oil in a frying pan and then added the chicken bites. I have since tried this recipe with olive oil, which is much healthier, and loved it.
You’ll need to cook the chicken bites until they are golden brown on all sides. I have to say that this dish was well received by all of the kids. I have tried the recipe using Italian dressing, Caesar dressing, and Ranch dressing. All were delicious. I imagine other dressing flavors would be just as good.