Food Fail: Parmesan-Ranch Chicken

OK, I think I’m finally ready to share a food fail here. A big, fat, ugly one. Trust me when I say I don’t do this lightly. In general, I pretty much suck at admitting defeat, and Lord help you if you try to tell me you didn’t like something I made for you. Dan has learned the hard way to tread very lightly when “critiquing” my meals. Before he even takes his first bite, he knows I’m staring intently, awaiting his reaction. And if it’s anything less than, “oh wow that’s good!” I’m going to be offended.

It’s a tough life he leads, clearly, what with his kitchen-slaving wife settling for nothing less than deliciousness for his every meal. Real tough.

Now, the actual hardship Dan deals with is my inevitable meltdown when I start to sense that a meal isn’t going as planned. It gets ugly, folks. And with this meal, that meltdown happened right around this moment…

…The moment when I flipped my Parmesan and Ranch-breaded chicken, and all the Parmesan-Ranch goodness remained glued to the pan, not to the chicken. Not a good sign.

Now, I don’t know how, exactly, Talitha at Love Pomegranate House managed to keep her parmesan-y breading firmly secured to her chicken breasts, but I followed her seemingly simple instructions to T, and all I got was a black lump of coal glued to my pan. (Epiphany: have I been bad this year? Is this a mid-year warning from Santa for what’s to come if I don’t shape up?!)

Doesn’t that look like a *blast* to clean? Sigh.

So we essentially had plain, unseasoned chicken for dinner last night, since all the flavors were left-behind, destined to forever be burnt onto my pan. Could I have thrown some garlic powder on top, salt & pepper, and saved the meal? Perhaps. But not in my irrational, mid-fail state of rage. And bless his heart, Dan ate that bland chicken up like a champ, without a word.

Needless to say, tonight we’re having my tried and true salmon. I can’t handle another failure.

But seriously, what did I miss?! What is the magic that prevents Parmesan from melting onto the pan?