If you made a mess frying it, you may have had the grease too hot. Try turning it down a little. Of course, the obvious step of covering it while it cooks shouldn't be left out, either. My wife bakes a lot of food. You can take boneless, skinless chicken breasts (or pork chops, etc) and bread them with a mix of bread crumbs, lemon-pepper, garlic salt, and whatever else strikes you as sounding good, put them on a pan and place them in the oven. It comes out tasting wonderful. It's also healthier for you than fried. This was a hard thing for me to accept, because I grew up on fried chicken.