Super Easy Baked Chicken Breasts

Serves: 4-8 people
Hands-on time: 5 min
Total time: 30 min

This recipe for baked chicken breasts is truly super easy.  Baked (or roasted) chicken breasts can easily dry out and taste tough, but this recipe gives consistently moist, delicious results.

Ingredients

2 to 2-1/2 lbs chicken breasts (chicken thighs work well too but have a different nutritional profile)
1 Tbsp Olive oil
1-1/2 Tbsp Adobo or other seasoning blend Continue reading “Super Easy Baked Chicken Breasts”

Roasted Pork Loin with Pears

Serves: 2-4 people
Hands-on time: 20 min
Total time: 40 min

I made this Pork Loin with Pears recipe last year when I found it on the Williams Sonoma website and it was “quite good” or at least that’s what I wrote in my notes. It just so happens that we received a box of Harry and David pears for Christmas this year and I’m looking for something to make with them, so decided to try this recipe again.

I changed a few things this time around. Since I wanted to create a larger quantity of pork, I bought a 3-lb pork loin roast instead of the 1-lb loin the original recipe called for. Obviously this big roast was going to take much longer than the 1-lb loin, so I sliced it into three pieces and increase some of the other ingredients to compensate. Some of the pork is going to be saved for later in the week so I didn’t need to triple the pears and such, just the seasonings and browning oil.

Anyway, here’s the recipe. I think it makes a great-tasting but easy Sunday night meal. Continue reading “Roasted Pork Loin with Pears”

Moroccan Roasted Salmon and Cauliflower

Serves: 4 people
Hands-on time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min

This roasted salmon recipe came from Cooking Light magazine. The basic recipe is intact but I modified a few things to make it healthier and fixed the time (as usual) to reflect actual prep work. (Read here about why cooking always take longer than the recipe says.) Continue reading “Moroccan Roasted Salmon and Cauliflower”

Healthy Chicken Piccata with Spinach (GF)

Serves: 4 people
Hands-on time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min

This recipe started as a much higher-calorie version of chicken piccata from Cook’s Illustrated magazine. I replaced the all purpose flour with millet flour to make it gluten free, omitted the shallots and parsley, used pre-minced garlic, and reduced the quantities of oil and butter by almost half. The result is a healthy chicken piccata that is much lower in calories while still retaining the delicious flavor. The spinach at the end was also my personal touch, which I think makes the dish more complete (and prettier!). [Side note: The original recipe was way too lemony for my taste so I cut that back as well. Feel free to add more lemon back in if you like it that way.] Continue reading “Healthy Chicken Piccata with Spinach (GF)”

Chicken Piccata (adapted from Cooks Illustrated)

Serves: 4-6 people
Hands-on time: 35 min
Total time: 45 min

This is one of those recipes that looks complicated because of the number of steps involved, but once you get started it goes pretty quick. Even so, it is a tad longer than 30 minutes but totally worth the extra time! Continue reading “Chicken Piccata (adapted from Cooks Illustrated)”