Cooking with Duchess: Ballpark Chicken

Welcome to my blog segment: Cooking with Duchess! (I am so full of myself, wow.) If you didn't know this about me, I love to cook and have been for almost my entire life. While I could spend hours browsing Pinterest for new recipes, my favorite thing to do is tweak recipes and make them my own. I don't think I've followed a recipe tit for tat in years! In these posts I will share with you my latest creations so you can try them out for yourself!

Ballpark Chicken

Nothing says summer like a baseball game! My Phillies are currently on a winning streak (whaaaat?) so of course I had to make something to celebrate. Plus Cole Hamels will probably be leaving soon and this makes me so unbelievably sad I can't talk about it, OKAY? Anyway, I was in the mood to experiment and who doesn't love pretzels??

My favorite part of making this was crushing the sourdough pretzel nuggets. I imagined I was smashing the faces of past lovers who lied to me and it just made it that much more fun (shouldn't suppress that anger for too long)!

I used New Belgium's (supporting Colorado Breweries YAY) Snapshot Ale to mix with the cheese and then it was perfect because I got to drink the rest! You could try using a dark lager instead but I feel like pale ales are more of a summer beer. If you try a different type of beer let me know!

Shout-out to McKenna (read her blog) for being my amazing photographer and Vixen for being the cutest little sous chef who licks up my messes off the floor!

Ballpark Chicken

1 3-lb package of chicken breasts
3 cups sourdough pretzel nuggets
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 tbsp Dijon mustard (try horseradish Dijon mmm)
1 egg
1/2 jar cheese dip (like Tostitos or Newman's Own)
1/2 bottle pale ale (I used New Belgium Snapshot)

Set oven to 400 degrees. Smash chicken so that it is thin and cut into 2 inch thick strips, set aside. Crush pretzels in a coating tray until desired size is achieved (I did larger chunks). Mix in mustard and cheese until coating is wet. Whisk egg in separate coating tray, then dip strips first in egg and then in pretzel topping. Line the strips in a cooking pan. Stir together beer and cheese dip until frothy, then slowly pour over chicken. Bake for 35-40 minutes.



Until next time my loves x.