Dinner in a Dish

Dinner in a dish is something I've been making for years.  Whether its out of convenience or laziness or you could call it both, this dish is something any beginning cook can make and the most experienced will love because simply put - it's easy!  It's great the first night you make it and even better the second night. And it's one of my go to dishes when I take dinner to someone for a new baby, loss of a loved one, or just because they need a home cooked meal!

On the night I made this we didn't have my regular package of Kraft Zesty Italian Salad Dressing 'powdered' mix, so I improvised as I normally do.  When you live a bit out in the country, you just don't run back up the store for one ingredient.  So, I used an already prepared bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing (1/2 bottle) and poured that over it instead of the butter mixed with the dry dressing mix.

Dinner in a Dish

4 pork chops or 4 chicken breast or thighs
2 cans green beans, drained
6 -8 red potatoes (any potatoes will work for this), quartered

****here you either get more complicated or do like I did this time and use the bottle of prepared Italian Dressing...either way is great!
1 stick butter
1 package Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing Mix
or
8 ounces of a bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing Mix = 1/2 bottle

For this dish you can use any 9 x 13 inch Pyrex or any casserole dish.  You can use chicken or pork chops and tonight I chose pork chops.  You'll also see that I peeled too many potatoes and squash so the pork chops got placed on top of the green beans and potatoes.  I made sure everything got a good dose of the Italian Dressing. 

You simply divide your dish in thirds by placing 2 cans of drained green beans (I like the Italian green beans that are cut in strings) on one side, 5-8 chopped and quartered new potatoes on the other side, and place in the middle your meat.  Always spray or grease your dish lightly as it makes cleanup so much easier and doesn't cause this dish to stick.  You then either melt one stick of margarine and whisk into it your Italian Dressing mix. 
 
Spoon the seasoned butter over the entire casserole dish that has your potatoes, green beans and pork or chicken in it.  Or the 1/2 bottle of dressing.  As you can see below I added yellow squash from our garden that has just begun to produce.  We will have as always an overabundance of squash, so I will find every way possible to use it up!

This time I sprinkled some garlic salt on top of the entire dish just to add a little more seasoning, but this is totally optional.
 
Cover tightly with foil and cook for1 hour and 15 minutes on 425 or until your meat is done.
 
Serve with a salad and bread and dinner is done! 

 

You'll see instead of salad on for this dinner we had fresh radishes from our garden of my husbands and my homemade mac and cheese.