We have a couple weekly regulars in our dinner rotation and it usually involves having chicken or salmon as our main and then I'll just throw together a side or two to make it a balanced dinner. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, if you are a recipe connoisseur like myself, then you are continuously getting bored with the same ol' way to cook chicken or salmon so the "easy" dinner becomes harder and harder to get excited about. First, let me preface, that this difficult to start with because I am just not that into chicken and would much rather prefer to eat salmon. Seeing and dealing with raw chicken has always left me less than jazzed, however, Jon loves it and marriage is about compromise, right? I have a hard time getting motivated to buy it at the store and then bring it home and decide what to do with it, but I know that salmon is pricier and chicken is still a good source of protein. So like a prayer answered to get me amped about chicken breasts I had in the freezer, I was in luck this past month because my issue of
Cooking Light featured over 50 different ways to cook chicken. A lot of the recipes looked and sounded tasty, and to my surprise I marked several that I
wanted to make. The first recipe I tried from the issue is called Miso Chicken and it ended up being really, REALLY good! So much so, that I'll probably make it again when chicken comes up in the rotation. In fact, I might choose it over making salmon. :)
Miso Chicken
After the hour of marinading, this recipe comes together really quickly. The recipe says to only saute the chicken 4 minutes on one side, but I did 4 minutes. Also, if you are like me and have no clue where to start with finding miso in your grocery store, I found mine in the asian food section and it's basically a grainy liquid in a bottle that is essentially what you pour into hot water to make miso soup. At least, that's what I found and it seemed to work just fine. This would taste great with a quick vegetable sir-fry, cucumber salad, rice noodles or soba noodles.
Corriander-Rubbed Wild Salmon
As for a good salmon recipe, here's one I tried recently from an issue of Clean Eating. I liked the infusion of coriander and lemon and I thought the fish came out tender, flaky and deliciously simple. I also made it with wild rice and used fresh spinach instead of swiss chard.
The miso chicken sounds really good. I have made 2 soup recipes from that issue - avgelomono and old-fashioned chicken noodle. Both turned out good, although I had to add chicken bouillon to my stock.
ReplyDeleteooooh, I'll have to try those! Thanks!
DeleteI'm going to try both this week. What do you think are good pairing side dishes for these?? This "blessed" Paleo diet won't allow me to eat rice or anything fun like that. I'm just think steamed broccolli or asparagus but we ALWAYS have that. Like you said, it gets boring.
ReplyDeleteTry buying something totally different than your usual go-to's, like maybe kale or Brussels sprouts. Both sauteed with a little bit of olive oil and garlic is so good! Or do mashed carrots or peas? Mushy peas sound kind of gross, but I loved them in England! Butternut squash or acorn squash are also a couple of my favorites. I also recently tried doing faux-mashed potatoes with cauliflower and I actually thought it turned out pretty good...but I think that largely had to do with the non-dairy cream cheese that I used to flavor it.
ReplyDelete