Chicken Parmesan Sandwiches

Any chance you’d be interested in a five ingredient recipe for chicken parmesan sandwiches with 50g of protein each? I thought so! These sandwiches use frozen lightly breaded chicken breast to make chicken parm easier than ever.

Ingredients and Substitutes

There are only five core ingredients but plenty of customization options for calorie needs or ingredient availability. I’ll quickly run you through everything you need to know below.

The Frozen Chicken Bites

I used Kirkland Signature or Just Bare lightly breaded chicken breast bites, marinara, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, and sandwich rolls from Seattle International Baking Company. All of these can be found in one place in Costco, but there are tons of alternatives in other stores.

Lately, I’ve been making a ton of frozen chicken bites recipes and have tested nearly every option for lightly breaded chicken on the market. The two mentioned above are my favorites, followed by Perdue. Tyson, Realgood Foods, Applegate Farms, and Simple Truth (Kroger) also have options.

I’ll also mention that other forms of lightly breaded chicken breast like strips and filets work fine. You can either chop them to work with sandwich rolls or leave them whole, in the case of filets, to resemble a classic chicken sandwich.

Low Calorie Sandwich Rolls and Other Breads

I tested a few different bread options when developing this recipe. A baguette was too crunchy and inconsistent in size, while buns were a bit too messy. You may expect a mess when eating chicken parm sandwich, but I didn’t want it to be completely unwieldy. (Save the toasted baguette for honey chipotle chicken sandwiches.)

Sandwich rolls are perfect. They’re perfectly soft for toasting while the cheese melts, and sturdy thanks to not being sliced all the way through.

The sandwich rolls I used have 200 calories, 7g protein, 36g carbs, and 3g fat each. They are a pretty standard “white bread” option. There are low calorie sandwich rolls and keto bun options on the market that may be a great option if you want to reduce the calorie count of your chicken sandwiches.

Just keep in mind, the size of rolls you use may require slight adjustments to the amount of chicken parmesan filling you need to fill them with. See the photo below to get an idea of my filling to roll ratio.

Marinara and Mozzarella

Look for a marinara with 50-60 calories per 1/2 cup. That’s about as low calorie as it gets for premade marinara.

My recipe only calls for 3/4 cup of marinara so if you can only lay hands on something like Rao’s marinara from Costco with 100 calories per 1/2 cup, that’s more than fine. If you need a low calorie marinara for these sandwiches and other purposes, make your own.

As for the mozzarella, the recipe calls for fresh mozzarella because I’m clearly a chicken parm traditionalist. I found the sliced fresh mozzarella from Costco was sliced too thick and created an overly cheese-pulley chewy center. Tearing it into smaller pieces worked much better.

Garnishing and Serving

I garnished one of the chicken parmesan sandwiches you see pictured here with basil pesto, and the other with fermented Calabrian chili peppers (Trader Joe’s Italian Bomba Hot Pepper Sauce). During my testing, I tried pickled banana peppers, fresh basil and parsley, and a squeeze of lemon.

While dressed greens like arugula would work well, these sandwiches are already bursting at the seams. So good luck fitting much more on them without compromising structural integrity.

Instead, I’d recommend throwing together a quick side salad to serve on the side while the cheese melts in the final step of the recipe. Maybe something like this arugula salad or kale side salad.

That is everything you need to know about making sandwiches with chicken parmesan made from frozen chicken. Or it’s at least everything I can think of sharing with you. You can leave any questions about ingredients, methods, or anything else in the comments below.

Don’t forget to come back and leave a recipe review if you love these sandwiches! And if you’re looking for more things to make with frozen chicken bites, check out my pesto chicken pasta or chicken caesar crunch wraps recipes next.