Southern Cheesy Chicken

I grew up on southern cooking, which means I was made of mostly butter, cream, salt, and cheese.

Don’t get me wrong, we ate vegetables, but we always ate hearty, delicious meals around the table at the end of the day. I feel like we’ve lost some of that in today’s day and age. Our society is so fast-paced that we don’t take the time to slow down, cook big family meals, and then savor them together.

Before COVID happened, mealtime often looked like Josh and I re-heating leftovers or throwing a pizza in the oven. With work, kids, and commuting, there just wasn’t time to plan and prepare meals. Now that we’re all at home, I’m trying to be more thoughtful about the time we spend together in the evenings. A big part of that is creating meals that we can all share in together. Meals that will feed and fuel our bodies, but also meals that will give us an opportunity to gather and feed our souls as well.

This “Southern Cheesy Chicken” is a recipe that I learned from my mama at a very young age, and I’m not even sure she has it written down. It is the recipe that we would make when we were craving comfort food. It was also the meal we would cook when a friend or neighbor was sick or needed a bit of help.

There are so many memories wrapped up in this one meal, and I hope that by sharing it with you all, you can make some new memories with it as well!

Ingredients

2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, ideally local and/or organic
Garlic or Seasoned Salt
Pepper
~1 cup of gluten free flour (you can also use regular!)
1 stick, or 8 tablespoons, of butter
3 cups of heavy whipping cream
1 package of sliced swiss cheese

Recipe

First, go ahead and preheat your over to 350 degrees farenheit.

Season the chicken breasts on each side with garlic salt or seasoned salt and pepper. You can add other spices or dried herbs if there are any in particular that you like!

Melt butter over low-medium heat until totally melted. I like to use my cast iron pan for this! Watch that it doesn’t start to burn or brown.

Put flour into a ziploc bag, and add the chicken in batches to coat. Make sure that each of the breasts are coated evenly all the way around.

Once coated in the flour, add them to the man with the melted butter and turn it up to medium-high heat.

Cook the chicken until it it golden brown and crispy on both sides. The center does not need to be cooked through, as it will be baked in the oven after this! Brown them in batches if you need to. Once browned, remove the chicken from the pan in put them into a 9×13 casserole dish, or in 2 smaller casserole dishes like you can see I did.

Once the chicken is in the casserole dish or dishes, turn the heat to medium-low and add the heavy whipping cream to the hot pan with the chicken drippings. Stir consistently until it is bubbly and thickens, 5-10 minutes.

While the whipping cream mixture is thickening, cover the breasts with slices of swiss cheese. You can cheese it up and use the whole package, or just use enough slices to cover the breasts – that one’s up to you!

Once the white sauce is bubbly and thickened, pour it over the cheesy chicken breasts!

Cover with foil, or with oven-proof glass or ceramic tops if you have them. This is super important! If you don’t cover the dishes, the cheese will burn, and nobody wants that!