Crispy Chicken Parmesan

OK you guys, I'm a little more prepared in this blog and came up with more than just one photo. I haven't had Chicken Parmesan in so long and we ended up using this recipe HERE. These are fried AND baked these and they turned out SO good! The full directions are below, enjoy! 

Ingredients for the Chicken:
2 chicken breasts, cut horizontally, so 4 total pieces
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp paprika

Ingredients for the breaded topping:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp pepper
3/4 tsp garlic powder
3/4 tsp paprika
3 tbsp buttermilk

Ingredients for cooking:
3-4 cups vegetable oil

Ingredients to top:
Mozzarella cheese
Spaghetti sauce
Oregano

Directions:
In a bowl, place all of the ingredients for the chicken together and whisk. Add chicken and marinate for 2 hours (or longer if you can). I just left it in the bowl, not covered, in the refrigerator. 

In the meantime, start putting together the ingredients for the breaded topping and whisk them altogether in a bowl. Make sure the breading is evenly lumpy. 

Once the tenders are done and ready to go, add the vegetable oil to a pan on the stove, on high heat. The best way for me to check if it's ready to go is you can hear it sizzling or I will take a tiny bit of water from my fingers and flick it into the vegetable oil. If it sizzles, it's ready for frying. 

Before placing the chicken in the oil, take out a cookie or baking sheet and line with aluminum foil or cooking spray. Set the oven to 430 degrees. 

Remove the chicken from the marinade, one piece at a time, and straight into the breading. Press down and make sure it gets a lot of the breading, evenly. Then place in the oil. The original recipe said to let it sit 4-5 minutes on each side but I didn't want mine to burn so it only ended up being 2-3 minutes per side. Please just watch and check and make sure it doesn't burn or get too hard to where you can't eat it. Once it's done in the oil, move the chicken to the pan or baking sheet. 

Once you are done with all of the pieces, place spaghetti sauce, mozzarella cheese and oregano on top of each slice. Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes. 

You can easily turn these into sliders or do what I did and just eat them by itself. If you make this, let me know what you think below! Also, don't judge the paper plates. We have hard water and it literally stains all of our dishes so I end up having to re-wash over and over to get them out. So, paper plates end up being the better choice :)