Gross Football Lunch – Super Bowl LIX

Recipe of the Week: Chicken Parmigiana

Wrong! Making your own chicken parmigiana is not hard, and you can do it! No single step is particularly complicated, and no single step requires any fancy techniques. Rather, the primary limiting factor of making chicken parmigiana at home is time. The entire operation of making chicken parm will take 2-3 hours, plus however much time it will take to prepare your tomato sauce. (For this reason, I must urge you on the strongest possible terms to complete the tomato sauce before you start any of the work detailed below.) This, and the fact that a chicken parm can easily feed a crowd, makes it the ideal cooking project for Super Bowl Sunday. What else are you gonna do, watch six hours of pregame shows? Trust me, you’re gonna want a task to spare you from this fate.

The secondary limiting factor of homemade chicken parm is organization. You will want to make a plan for how you intend to use your kitchen space as efficiently as possible, as few are the kitchens that can accommodate an individual station for each individual step in the parming process. You will also want to have a similarly specific equipment plan, as few are the kitchens that are well-stocked enough to accommodate making this recipe without stopping to wash a particular kitchen implement or food prep surface. Before you get started, make sure you have a couple of baking sheets, a couple of cutting boards and/or blocks, a roll of parchment paper, a meat tenderizer or rolling pin, and three large but shallow bowls. Finally, if you have frozen the tomato sauce, be sure to get it our of the freezer the night before cooking, to ensure that it defrosts.

Ready? Let’s go!

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In the interest of staying as organized as possible, start by getting a few things ready well in advance. Cut a fresh lemon into 6-8 wedges, place them in a ramekin or small bowl, and set them aside. Shred an entire pound of low-moisture mozzarella cheese and place it in a large bowl, then flip your box grater around and use the tiny hole side to shred 8 ounces of Parmesan cheese. Place the Parmesan in the bowl with the mozzarella and stir them together, so that the Parmesan disperses throughout. Cover the large bowl and set it aside, preferably in your fridge.

Now it’s time to prep the chicken. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are typically sold at the supermarket in packs of three; they are also oversized monstrosities, and attempting to pound them into thin cutlets as they are is a terrible idea. You will need to butterfly your chicken breasts, which is a $2 cooking term for describing slicing them in half in such a way to turn one impossibly thick chicken breasts into two chicken breast pieces of reasonable thickness. Place one of the breasts flat on a clean cutting board and grab your sharpest chef’s knife. Hold the knife parallel to the cutting board and line it up with the middle of the chicken breast, then carefully slice the breast horizontally all the way through until it is sliced into two pieces. (If you are having trouble visualizing this process, please refer to this guide, which has pictures.) Place the two pieces onto a separate plate or baking sheet and repeat the process with the other two breasts.

Once you chicken breasts are butterflied, it’s time for the fun part! Grab one of your six breast pieces, lay it flat on the same surface you used for butterflying, and cover it with parchment paper, making sure that there is plenty of excess paper surrounding the chicken. Next, pick up either a meat tenderizer or a sturdy rolling pin, and take out your frustrations. Just whack the ever-living snot out of that thing, until it the entirety of the chicken piece has been flattened down to a thickness of half an inch or less. Some nugget-sized pieces of chicken may break off from the main breast; this is ok. Once the piece is flattened, remove it (along with any unexpected nuggets) to a clean plate or baking sheet and sprinkle it with salt, then repeat the process with the other five pieces. The parchment will probably tear after two or three rounds of pounding, so replace it when necessary.

Eventually, all your chicken pieces will be pounded out and ready for breading. Find a spot in your kitchen where you can arrange three large but shallow bowls next to each other. Fill the first bowl with flour, add in some salt and freshly cracked pepper, and gently stir it together. Crack four eggs into the second bowl and give them a decent but not necessarily thorough beating.Fill the third bowl with a generous amount of panko breadcrumbs. Make sure you keep some extra flour, egg, and panko at hand, should you need to refill any of the bowls. Finally, set a clean plate or baking sheet nearby.

It’s breading time! This is the vaunted two hands method of cutlet breading, which keeps one hand dry while the other gets all messy. Or at least, it does when performed correctly; I have screwed this method up time and time again, so I will help you avoid this fate by keeping track of what hand to use when with the power of bold text.

Pick up a cutlet with your non-dominant hand and put it in the flour, then cover absolutely as much of the surface of your cutlet as possible wit the flour. Pick up the cutlet with your non-dominant hand again, shake off any excess flour, and drop it in the egg. Now, use your dominant hand to cover the cutlet with egg, then pick the cutlet back up with your dominant hand and let any excess egg drain back into the bowl, then place the cutlet in the breadcrumbs. Use your dominant hand to cover it in breadcrumbs, brushing off any excess with your dominant hand. Congratulations, your first cutlet is breaded! Place it on your clean plate or baking sheet, then repeat with your remaining cutlets (including any small pieces).

And now, at last, let us fry our cutlets. Begin by preheating your oven to either 400° F (if you melty-er top cheese) or 425° F (for crispier top cheese). Set yet another clean plate or baking sheet off to the side, within easy reach of your frying station, along with your lemon wedges and your salt. Make sure to line this plate or baking sheet with paper towels or a wire rack, so your fried cutlets will drain of excess oil. Grab your trusty frying pan and fill it with vegetable oil to a depth of about one-quarter inch, or enough to halfway submerge your cutlets. Set the pan over medium-high heat, and wait for the oil to get hot; the oil is hot when it shimmers and thins out in the pan, and water sizzles and evaporates immediately after being splashed in the pan.

Lay down as many cutlets as you can fit in your pan without crowding them, then leave them alone for 3-4 minutes. After those 3-4 minutes, you will notice the breadcrumbs on the bottom half start to turn golden brown; this is your cue to flip the cutlets (note that any nuggets will cook more quickly, and therefore need to be flipped sooner). Flip your cutlets and let them cook on the other side for another 2-3 minutes, until it takes on the same golden brown color. Once that happens, remove the cutlets from the pan and set them on your plate/baking sheet to drain; give each cutlet a spritz of fresh lemon juice and a sprinkle of salt as it comes out of the frying pan. Now check your pan; you will probably need to add some more oil into the pan and wait for it to heat up before starting the next batch of cutlets. Repeat this process for as many batches as it takes, and remember to hit every single cutlet with lemon juice and salt when it’s done!

Congratulations! You have butterflied, pounded, breaded, and fried a metric crapton of chicken cutlets! The hard work portion of this recipe is over. But now, we must assemble. Grab a standard issue 9” x 13” casserole dish and the tomato sauce. Spoon out a generous pat of tomato sauce and splash it into the bottom of the pan, then use the back of your spoon to spread it evenly across the bottom. Next, arrange half of your fried chicken cutlets into a single layer on top of the sauce. Top the chicken with a generous but even layer of sauce, and top the sauce with half of your mozzarella and Parmesan blend. Put the rest of your cutlets on top of the cheese, followed by another layer of sauce, followed by the rest of your cheese blend, and drizzle olive oil over the very top. Sock the whole entire layered pile into the over and set a timer for 30 minutes.

Take a few minutes to decompress and rest your feet, and after 30 minutes, check on your casserole. The good news is that everything is already cooked, so the question of when to bring it out of the oven is entirely one of personal preference. Does the cheese look melted? Is your casserole dish bubbling? As long as the answer to both of these questions is yes, your parm is done cooking. In the unlikely event that your casserole dish is not bubbling, or you decide the cheese is not melted and/or browned to your liking, keep checking on it every five minutes until you think it’s ready.

Once your casserole is done, bring it out of the oven and sprinkle it with some roughly chopped fresh parsley, then let it rest for absolutely no less than 20 minutes, and preferably 30! While this happens, make some pasta to go with. Set a pot of salted water on to boil and, when it reaches a boil, cook a box of the pasta of your choice according to the package’s instructions. Reserve a cup of pasta water in the final minute of pasta cooking, then drain the pasta when it is done. Once drained, put your pasta back in the pot and set it over medium-low heat. Add enough tomato sauce to coat your pasta (use your best judgment), along with some olive oil and a splash of pasta water, then stir everything together until the sauce coats the pasta and takes on a glossy sheen.

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Once the 20-30 minutes resting period is complete, it’s finally time to eat! Serve up some sauced pasta onto each plate, along with a generous scoop of chicken parmigiana (and maybe a salad of some kind, if you can be bothered). Hooray! You did it! It took some work, but the absence of sweat, tears, and elbow grease your body is experiencing will make the resulting parm taste all the better. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the game with a full belly and a bottomless reservoir of contempt for both of the teams playing, neither of whom can be tolerated. Dig in!

Super Bowl LIX Pick & Conference Championship Results

Line pulled from ESPN at 9:35 AM Eastern on Friday, February 7th, 2025. My pick for the game, and the relevant spread, is listed first. The designated home team is displayed in bold.

Chiefs fans have every reason to be excited, and that’s the problem for the rest of us, isn’t it? Hyper-competence is terrible entertainment, and these Chiefs, who were the most joyously fun to watch team in the league as recently as a couple seasons ago, have finally completed their heel turn by eschewing the physics-melting heroics of Mahomes’ early seasons in favor of Patriots-esque football superiority. I know I’m naive for thinking this, but part of me still holds on to the idea that we wouldn’t complain about the Chiefs’ dominance if they were still built around no-look sidearm bombs thrown on the run. Instead, today’s Chiefs lie in wait until third downs and fourth quarters, let their opponent to do something dumb, then put the game away. For Chiefs fans, how can this game even have stakes? Sure, a chance at the first three-peat of the Super Bowl era is thrilling, but if the Chiefs lose, how disappointed can they really be? And if you’re not all that bothered when your team loses the Super Bowl, how much did you care in the first place?

And if you’re a neutral fan, odds are you’re already thinking about skipping out on the game in order to catch up on your finest animes and/or AGDQ reruns. You won’t go through with it – at least, not until and unless the game gets completely out of hand – but you’ll think about going through with it. Even acknowledging that the original matchup between these two teams was about as entertaining as football games get, I find myself having real trouble getting excited for this one, and I know I’m not alone.

Part of this is owing to my steadfast refusal to process and move on from the Vikings’ coprophagic playoff appearance, and part of this is owing to my inability to process the final failure of my nation state of residence, but I sense that the vibes around this game are sour and fucked. It just seems that this game will stay close the whole way through, but in the least entertaining way imaginable. None of us can abandon ship to give Gurren Lagann another shot if our eyeballs are stuck stapled to a 9-7 festival of punts and turnovers. That’s a one score game, it could become interesting any second, you know?

To that end, perhaps I should peel myself off of the floor of the emotional sewer I seem to have thrown myself into and discuss my pick for this game, no? And you would suspect that, since there is only one game to discuss this time, surely I am coming prepared with an exhaustive list of carefully curated talking points? Or several carefully considered arguments supported with advanced statistics and other factual evidence? Or at least more thought and effort than I put into a pithy and disrespectful write-up of a 2-point confidence pool assignment from the bowels of November?

Oh, you sweet summer child. Yes, I had two weeks to bring this column together, but I spent those two weeks taking naps and playing video games. Since I still can’t be bothered with professionalism, I have decided to double down on the Gross Football Lunch commitment to terse, pithy dismissiveness. The Philadelphia Eagles enter the game as the superior football team in every possible way…except for their head coach and quarterback. Therefore, the Chiefs will win. Football is a complex sport, but that doesn’t mean it’s complicated.

The Eagles do have a real path to victory, but they only have one. If they build an early lead, they can let their pass rush tee off on the Chiefs’ deeply suspect offensive tackles, and as we all saw four years ago, Mahomes can’t lead a miraculous comeback when he’s swallowed whole as soon as he finishes his dropback. But Mahomes was a much different player back then, and every fiber of his development since that loss has been in service of never losing like that ever again. Can these Chiefs come back from a three-score deficit in the fourth quarter? Perhaps not. But they won’t end up in that situation. They will play the Eagles as close as they need to, because when the Chiefs play close, they’re unstoppable. And they always play close.

As a final reminder, just know that if the Super Bowl ends up being a colossal letdown of a football game, it will hardly have been the first time that’s happened, and it won’t be the last, either. If the game sucks, explore every avenue available to you to enjoying yourself this Sunday. Eat your chicken parms and cookies, drink the beverage of your choice, and be merry regardless of how the game goes. For come Monday morning, some jackass 20-year-old with no social skills and the worst haircut imaginable is gonna ruin your life.

Enjoy the game, everyone!