Easy Catalina Chicken

I love recipes that have the word "easy" in them...I don't always believe it - but this was true!  This was super easy, and had a really great taste!  It kinda reminded us of "sweet and sour" chicken!  We made this up with some white rice (then you just take the extra sauce and drizzle it right over that) and Green Beans.....such a complete meal!!  Do it up :)

Ingredients:

1 cup Apricot or Apricot-Pineapple Jam (Peach is yummy too)
1 cup Catalina Salad Dressing (Russian works too)
1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 envelope dry onion soup mix (like Lipton)
3-5 lbs chicken (breasts, bone-in/boneless, thighs, tenders, whatever)*
olive oil

*The amount of chicken you use is very flexible.  If you use less, you’ll just have lots of sauce, and if you use more- you’ll have less sauce to spoon over rice, but there’s plenty to cook that much chicken.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Heat a large oven proof skillet or dutch oven to medium-high heat on the stove top.  If you don’t have an oven proof one, you can use any skillet and just transfer your chicken to a baking dish after searing.

While pan is heating, place jam, Catalina dressing, cider vinegar, and 1/2 of the onion soup packet (just eyeball it) in a bowl and stir to combine.  Set sauce aside.  Sprinkle remaining onion soup mix onto chicken pieces and pat on all sides with clean hands.

Drizzle olive oil into hot pan to coat bottom of pan.  Place chicken pieces in and cook without moving for 2 minutes.  Flip chicken to other side and cook for 2 more minutes.  Pour sauce over chicken and spread out evenly over chicken pieces.

Place pan in oven, uncovered and cook until chicken registers 165 on a meat thermometer.  Different parts of the chicken will vary in time so gauge according to what you are using.  boneless skinless breasts usually take about 20-30 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool at least 10 minutes.  Serve chicken and sauce over hot white rice.  Serving size varies according to how much chicken you make, but serves a bunch!