I have always loved Chicken Parmesan, and with the crispy coating and melty, gooey cheese I’m sure I’m not alone. However, it’s not a dish I tend to make at home; since it involves frying chicken and making pasta and making a sauce, it’s one I wait to order in a restaurant. But no more! This easy dump-and-bake casserole brings you the very same flavor with virtually no prep. It’s just a matter of stirring together a few ingredients, letting the oven do its work and voila – chicken parm!

If you haven’t made a dump-and-bake pasta dish before, you’re in for a treat. You don’t have to boil a single noodle – all you have to do is stir the pasta into the sauce ingredients (usually with a little extra liquid involved) and the pasta simmers in the sauce in the oven, so it’s extra flavorful.

In this case, we’re using spaghetti, which gets mixed with marinara and some water, mozzarella, garlic powder, and chicken. You don’t even have to cook the chicken ahead of time, that’s how easy this is!

You just stir all that together, cover it with foil, and pop it in the oven. Once the pasta is nearly al dente, you top it with breadcrumbs and cheese and let it hang out in the oven again until the cheese is nice and melty and the breadcrumbs are crunchy.

That means you still get the crunch of that signature crispy breadcrumb coating, but you didn’t really have to coat anything, let alone go to the trouble of breaking out your frying pan. This is one dinner that the entire family is always happy about, including the cook.