Dinner: One Pan Chicken & Veggies

My baking and foods section is now primarily dominated by Battle of Ingredients and Goodfood recaps and that is generally the moments in life I try new things. But, this past weekend was my husband’s birthday so since we’ve had a lot of expenses (and I did buy him more than usual Boxing Day hauls), I took it simple and took care of all the cooking this weekend. We did have some other experiences where we had to finish up leftovers from the week and went out with friends, but I ended up trying out three new recipes and this first one was a simple and efficient dinner meal: One Pan Chicken & Veggies.

One Pan Chicken & Veggies

Original recipe used as guidance via Pinterest: https://natashaskitchen.com/2015/11/23/one-pan-chicken-and-vegetables-recipe/

Ingredients

3 pieces boneless chicken thighs, sliced in thirds
1 tsp Piri Piri spices
1.5 lbs baby potatoes, halved
1 lb Nantes carrots, halved lengthwise
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt and pepper

How to make it

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. In a medium sized bowl, mix the chicken thighs with the piri piri spices. Cover and put in the fridge to marinate while preparing the vegetables.
3. Take a large cookie sheet and line with aluminum foil (or parchment paper and if you don’t mind the mix, you can just grease the pan with oil). Combine veggies in a medium (or large) bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper and toss. You can also toss in the lined cookie sheet with your hands, its your preference and saves on an extra bowl to wash. Pour the veggies into the cookie sheet, parting them in half so the middle third of the pan is reserved for the chicken.
4. Take the chicken from out of the fridge and place it down the center of the cookie sheet in the reserved place mentioned before.
5. Bake for 20 minutes, then take it out to turn the veggies and the chicken and put back for another 10 to 15 minutes. Make sure your chicken is cooked through, to be sure the internal temperature should reach 165F and juices run clear.

We definitely changed up the recipe from the original quite a bit. I needed a recipe really to figure out around what temperature to bake the whole pan at and for how long. Chicken is one of the meats you can’t eat raw so that was pretty important. This is a very simple meal and you can switch the spices around to what you like and use whatever veggies you like. In my opinion, potatoes and carrots are pretty tough to cook through so other veggies should turn it decent. We also make zucchini in a pan on the side as well since we needed to it those. It saves on dishes and is a simple preparation and cooking method which leaves time to take care of the dishes you worked with during the time (unless you have a dishwasher) and do other things during the wait time. I don’t think its necessary to turn the veggies and the chicken but I wanted to make sure that it would cook well on both sides. The chicken turns out very tender and not dry at all. I honestly improv-ed a lot of the dish so the spices and S&P quantity in the ingredient list might be a little off.

Have you tried One-Pan meals?
What do you like to cook?

Recap: Goodfood #12

It’s time for the next recap of Goodfood!

I seriously can’t reiterate how much I’ve been loving these boxes. In fact, you’ll see that we are absolutely surprised at how some of the more experimental choices have truly shocked us in how much we’ve enjoyed them. Without further ado, let’s see what we got this past week!

Olive Crusted Haddock with Barley Risotto and Roasted Fennel

First up is always the fish dish because fish needs to be made within 3 days of receiving it. Usually I like to do it within the next day. We don’t eat haddock frequently but this tastes really nice. The olive brings a interesting twist to it. My husband loves olives so it was right up his alley. Props to the barley risotto which is always nice because whenever I go out, the traditional risotto will always have milk or cheese in it and this dish is lactose-free. We’ve made fennel in a few ways now and it is one of those vegetables that takes some getting used to, however, I do say that till now, the roasted version might just be more preferred way.

Smoked Paprika Chicken with Kale Lollipops and Crispy Chickpeas

The overall favorite of this week’s selections goes to this one. There are some nice elements here. I like that we had to roast the chickpeas and season them. The chicken was spiced with smoke paprika and was fried on the pan and then put into the oven. The kale lollipops which was pretty much baby kale actually works the best in the oven. Because of everything have to get into the oven at different times but the times for flipping and such actually worked to our advantage to double duty the oven and cut down some cooking time. Its a fairly simple dish that yielded some delicious results.

Cuban Spiced Steak with Mango & Cucumber Salsa

Next up is the easiest dish to make in the whole box. We don’t eat steak a lot nowadays. Not only is it expensive but red meats are getting harder to digest in general. This one did have some nice flavors. I had to take it easy on the salsa and ate mostly the mangos since I don’t eat raw vegetables. However, I’m not sure if it was the meal or not but I believe whatever cuban spices are, something didn’t sit too well for myself. It could be the spices or the red meat itself so I’m not going to blame the dish because it is good and I have a very sensitive digestive system. However, my husband did seem to be fine and he really liked it as well.

Pork Banh Mi with Pickled Vegetables and Spicy Mayo

Last one was the one I was looking forward to making the most. I’ve been eating banh mi’s since I was a kid. The fact that I couldn’t eat raw foods stopped me from buying them for the last 10 years. This one included pickling vegetables which sounded fun. While still raw, I’m actually pretty okay with pickled vegetables and to be fair, I exceeded their at least 10 minutes requirement quite a bit and I think that did the trick. The longest part for this recipe was the preparation because there was the grating of the daikon and the carrots. Then the thinly sliced cucumbers. I also didn’t make the meat patties as flat as it should have been so we ended up slicing them in half to fit the entire ciabatta bread. However, let me tell you: it was all worth it because it was so incredibly delicious. I’d make this again in a heartbeat. Its not exactly like how the ones I used to eat but it was still very tasty.

Overall…this week’s selections were pretty decent. A lot of new favorites and we liked pretty much all the meals and loved at least two of them. A few inspirational dishes that we’d like to try again if we gather up all the ingredients. Some nice ideas here and well-balanced flavors!

Dinner: One Pot Chicken and Sausage Pasta

Efficient meal solutions are my favorite thing to look up. The one that has caught my eye recently are all those one pot meal recipes. Its always felt very weird even if the idea does work. The coincidence of the situation was that we had sausage and chicken that needed to be cooked and a crazy amount of pasta so I decided to find a Pinterest recipe which didn’t actually happen that matched with I wanted but found a similar one so used it as a guideline.

One Pot Chicken and Sausage Pasta

This is the recipe that I used as a guideline to see how it all worked: http://www.number-2-pencil.com/2015/10/15/one-pot-cajun-chicken-and-sausage-alfredo/

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic, minced
4 chicken drumsticks, skin removed and meat separated from bone
4 honey-garlic sausages, cut in pieces
1 zucchini, chopped
dried pasta
chicken broth
salt & pepper
olive oil

1. Heat olive oil in a large cooking pot over medium heat.
2. Add chicken, both the bite size pieces and the bones to the pot. Season with salt and pepper. Brown the chicken.
3. Add in the sausages to the pot and cover the pot so it can cook through.
4. Add in the garlic and cook 1 to 2 minutes.
5. Add in chicken broth and dried pasta. The broth has to cover the meat and pasta. Add water if not enough broth.
6. Stir the ingredients together and bring to a simmer.
7. When it simmers, lower the heat. Cover and let simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.
8. Make sure pasta is cooked. Remove the pot from heat.

The one pot experiment was pretty successful. What makes things that simmer or bake in the oven really great is that you can set a timer and walk away to do something else. In terms of cooking, it still takes the same amount of time if you did it all separately, except here the bulk of time is on preparation and it frees up a little more time as everything cooks are about the same time. I would love to try this with some variety.

Have you tried doing one pot recipes?