Do you ever feel overwhelmed or discouraged as a mom trying to feed your family healthy meals that are not going to take up too much time? I really want to inspire you in the kitchen with ideas that are easy, and that can make mealtimes meaningful and special together. That’s my goal here on the podcast.
Today, I want to talk about what you can cook using chicken breasts. There are skinless, boneless breasts that you can buy in a pack of usually four to six. What can you cook with that for your family? We’re a family of seven, so we’ll generally cook three of the packs of four, which is 12 chicken breasts, at a time. You would know what’s a good amount to feed your family. A family of four would probably need six chicken breasts, and maybe a bit more if you’ve got lots of hungry men. You can always do eight if they come in packs of four, and then make up a meal or two with your leftovers to put into the freezer. I generally like to put meals in the freezer that include the chicken, the vegetables, and the starch, so that it’s a complete meal. Then it’s easy to pull it out when you need it, as opposed to just putting leftovers of each meal component in the fridge separately, and then forgetting about them, which I tend to do.
So, let’s talk about some ideas. One of the easiest things to do with them, something that I do once a week for lunch, is plain baked chicken breasts. I’ll put the chicken into glass dishes, and then I’ll add salt, pepper, onion powder, a bit of thyme or oregano, maybe some smoked paprika, and some olive oil. Then I’ll bake it for 20 to 25 minutes until they’re well cooked, juicy, and tender. Then we’ll eat them with bread or something, and everybody does their own thing with them. Some people shred the chicken and add mayonnaise, while others will slice it and put some cheese with it. We try to do that as an easy lunch once a week.
Let’s talk about marinating chicken. Marinating means that you add some liquid to the chicken, then leave it for any amount of time, from two hours to a day or two, and then you cook it. This will help tenderize the chicken, and will add lots of flavor. One of the easiest marinades to make is just olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a little salt and pepper. Some others are barbecue, sweet chili, and lemon and herb marinade. All you would do is add barbecue sauce, or some tomato sauce with honey, or some lemon juice with olive oil and herbs. You then seal off the container and leave it in the fridge. It doesn’t really need longer than a couple of hours, but if you have space, it’s fine to leave it overnight.
Then there are various things that you can do with the chicken after marinating it. It’s great to cook on the grill, or to make kebabs from – we like to add pineapple to the marinade, especially the tomato and honey marinade, and then we make kebabs with the chicken and pineapple pieces. Those are great to grill as well.
You can chop your chicken breasts into pieces before you cook them, and then make them into something like chicken curry, to which you would add yogurt or coconut cream, and obviously curry powder and et cetera. You could also use the pieces in a Chinese style stir fry with a little bit of soy sauce, some stir fry vegetables, and maybe some rice noodles. The chopped chicken pieces are easily cooked in a pan – you can cook them in either a pan or a pot with a lid, stir frying them on a medium heat with the soy sauce and seasonings like salt and pepper and et cetera.
Chopping your chicken pieces even smaller makes them great to use in a wrap with some tomato, lettuce, and some mayonnaise or different sauce. Similar to this, your chicken curry can be used with naan breads as well. Chopped and cooked chicken can also be used in pita breads. You can go Greek style, you can go Italian style, Mediterranean style, et cetera.
Another great way to cook your chicken is in the crockpot. This is very easy – just put the chicken breasts into it, in layers with seasoning, including lots of salt and pepper. Add a tiny bit of broth so that there’s not too much liquid in the crockpot, and then add some sauce, maybe barbecue sauce, a tomato and pecorino sauce, or a cheese sauce. Cook your chicken in there for two to three hours on high, and then you should be able to shred it in the sauce without taking it out of the crockpot. Then you can spread that over rice. It makes a great chicken and rice, but you can also use it in wraps.
If you cook your chicken without a sauce in the crockpot, again just with a little bit of broth and water in the bottom, then you can shred it and add mayonnaise to make a chicken salad. You can add your chicken salad to a roll, to a slice of bread or a sandwich, or to croissants. That’s one of our favorite ways to eat shredded chicken and mayonnaise – you just slice open the croissant and stuff it with the chicken mayo. To make your chicken salad a little bit more interesting, try adding some chopped cucumber, celery, or apple, which is very good. Even grapes can be great in a chicken salad. You can also add your shredded chicken or chicken salad mix to bagels, perhaps with some cream cheese, and that’s very nice.
You can also take your shredded chicken, maybe the one with sauce in the crockpot, and you can add some pasta. You can make a cheesy chicken pasta with some extra cheese sauce. If you want to make chicken Alfredo, you can add any kind of pasta such as tagliatelle, spaghetti, or penne. You’ve already got your creamy saucy mix in the crockpot, and you can just add that to the pasta with some yummy parmigiano reggiano on top.
I mentioned wraps, and chicken tacos are similar; also great with barbecue chicken or something similar, shredded or sliced, and then stuffed into tortillas with some salad ingredients.
Chicken pot pie is amazing. You would start by dicing your chicken breasts in quite small pieces, and then cooking them. You’d add some vegetables; cook those carrots, peas, parsnips, or anything that will go well with the chicken and gravy, but you want quite small pieces of everything. You can even use pieces of roast potato. What we like to do is cook roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots, and peas, and then we would mix up the leftovers to make a chicken pot pie. We would also add some of the leftover chicken gravy. That way, you already have your pot pie filling, and you can easily just add the pastry on top when you’re ready. I would usually put the mix of chicken, potatoes, carrots, peas, and gravy in a container in the freezer, and then just get it out when I want to cook the meal. I’d put it in a pie dish, and then add the puff pastry to the top and bake it.
Another delicious way to cook your chicken breasts is halving them so that they’re good and thin, and then adding barbecue sauce and putting them on the grill. We’ll usually do this with some kind of flatbread that we make and some haloumi cheese. You’ll slice your barbecued halved chicken breast, slice your haloumi, and put them into the flatbread or wrap.
Baked chicken can go on a salad if you slice it – it’s a great way to compliment your salad and add some protein, or it can go with a quinoa bowl. Just add some roasted veggies then a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the side.
Sheet pan dinners are a great way to use your chicken breasts. As I said previously, the chicken will take you about 20 to 25 minutes to cook, so you should choose some vegetables that take about the same amount of time to cook. This would be things like baby potatoes, carrots, and Brussels sprouts – those things will do well with chicken breasts on a sheet pan. So, lay out your. chicken breasts and your vegetables. Then you would add olive oil, salt, and pepper, and whatever other herbs you feel like adding, perhaps some sprigs of fresh thyme or rosemary. Then you bake it in the oven, stirring it halfway through so that we don’t have half of it burnt and half of it not cooked, but we have an even cook all the way through.
Then, if you want to get fancier, you can make chicken cordon bleu or chicken schnitzel, which are crumbed, or chicken peccorino, which is breaded and topped with marinara sauce and cheese, or stuffed chicken breasts. For those, you slice open the side of the chicken breast and fill it with something like cheese, cooked spinach, mushrooms that have been chopped and cooked, and et cetera. When you stuff your chicken breasts, you should partially cook your vegetables beforehand so that they’re well cooked by the time the chicken’s done – cook your mushrooms and season them, et cetera. Stuffed chicken breasts also take about 20 to 25 minutes to cook at 360 Fahrenheit, or 180 Celsius. Chicken cordon bleu and schnitzel are a little harder to make, so it’s best to look up a recipe for them. To make the schnitzel, you’d need your egg, flour, and breadcrumbs to crumb it before you cook it in a pan.
Of course, you can use whole chicken breasts in a casserole or shred them for a casserole like chicken lasagna. The shredded chicken would go well with something that has pasta or cheese sauce in it, and the whole chicken breasts would go well in something that has a lot of sauce, and perhaps a topping like mashed potato. This would make something similar to cottage pie, but with chicken breasts. You could also use your chicken breasts in a casserole where you just add vegetables around them. Maybe you could use some butternut, some Brussels sprouts, and some chicken breasts, with some tomato Parmesan sauce poured over, and the whole thing baked like an oven bake.
Here are my last few ideas. Chicken à la King is a great creamy chicken and mushroom sauce that you can have over rice. Shredded chicken goes great with mac and cheese, so you can make chicken mac and cheese. That adds a little more protein to the meal. Grilled chicken breasts also go great on rolls as burgers. You can have chicken burgers with some toppings like tomato, good sauces, some pickles, and some lettuce, and that’s very delicious.
You can add your grilled barbecue chicken breasts to lettuce and tomato to make a lettuce wrap with big, crispy pieces of lettuce. You make an amazing chicken soup, of course, which is one of the most important things to do with chicken. It can be a chicken noodle soup where you shred your chicken and add it to bone broth with some well chopped carrot onion and celery, and then you’ve got a good winter comfort meal, which is also a healing meal.
You can do chicken nachos with salsa, shredded chicken, some sour cream, and some good nacho chips. My mom-in-law used to make this amazing chicken, onion, and apricot juice bake that was delicious.
Chicken is so versatile! I’m sure there are many more ways you can use it. I hope this has sparked some ideas, and that you’ll make a good chicken meal in the near future.
