Tag: UnFancy recipes

Recipes

Un Fancy Baked Chicken

Alasen Zarndt

As a part of my Un-Fancy Recipe series, I talked about baking protein for a main course. The basic recipe involves a package of boneless and skinless chicken thighs, your oven preheated to 375F, and a pyrex dish. You place the chicken in the dish and cover with whatever “toppings” you want to use to make it flavorful. Then bake uncovered for 35 minutes and voila! Delicious chicken!

Here are some of our family favorites for “toppings” for the chicken

Artichoke chicken: Cover with a jar of marinated artichokes. You can actually dump the entire jar on the chicken, liquid and all

Greek Chicken: Cover with a jar of pitted Kalamata olives. You can dump the entire jar over the chicken as well, but if there is a lot of liquid, you may want to drain a bit of that first

Curry Chicken: Drizzle chicken with about 2 TBSP of avocado oil. Sprinkle 2 TBSP of curry powder over the chicken. You can use your hands to make sure the spice and oil evenly coats the chicken.

Summer Herb Chicken: Drizzle chicken with about 2 TBSP of Olive Oil. Sprinkle 3 TBSP of an herb blend over the chicken (we like Herbs de Provence, Sunny Paris Seasoning, and Fines Herbes)

Italian Chicken: Cover chicken with some Italian Seasoning (Past Sprinkle Seasoning). Add a half jar of marinara sauce over the chicken.

Pesto Chicken: Cover with a jar of pesto sauce.

You can also make some great baked chicken options using chicken breasts in much the same way as you do with the chicken thighs. When using chicken breasts, I like to cut them in half first so they are not as thick. This ensures they will cook correctly in the 35 minute timeframe.

 

Recipes

Un Fancy Roasted Veggies

Alasen Zarndt

Roasting veggies is definitely a family favorite and can be the key to learning to like a LOT of vegetables that you thought you hated. Often when we were kids, we may have been served veggies that were boiled, steamed, or overcooked. They don’t take great that way! So we go through life thinking we hate zucchini when really, we hated how it was prepared. Learning to roast veggies could be the game changer your family needs to start eating more of these nutritional powerhouses.

The hardest part about roasting veggies is getting them cut into pieces that are the “right” size for roasting. You want to make sure that your veggies are cut into bite sized pieces. This helps them to cook faster and makes them easier to serve. Some vegetables are generally easy and quick to chop up (like zucchini and summer squash), some are easy but not as quick (like brussels sprouts and carrots), and others can be more challenging (like sweet potatoes and inter squashes). There are a couple of ways to approach this: if you have time to pre-cut your veggies on a day off definitely do that (they will keep for 5 days in the fridge) OR go ahead and buy the pre-cut veggies from the store.

Another great option for roasting veggies is to get frozen veggies. Yes, FROZEN. A lot of people shy away from frozen vegetables thinking that what is in the “fresh produce” section is better for you, but this is not necessarily the truth. Frozen vegetables are picked when they are ripe and frozen right away, which preserves their nutrient content. A lot of the time, the fresh produce in your store was picked when it was still green and ripened using gas on the shipping trucks/vessels on it’s way to the store. This means it can have fewer nutrients than the frozen veggies! (This is particularly true if you life in the icy north in the winter time.)

The general veggie roasting recipe is as follows: Preheat the oven to 400F. Place 2 lbs of chopped veggies into a large bowl (if using frozen veggies, you can put them in the bowl still frozen). Toss the veggies with oil (we like light olive oil for this, but also use avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil sometimes as well). Spread the veggies out of a cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper or a spice blend of your choice. Place in the oven until they begin to brown slightly.

TADA! That’s it. I made a chart below with some suggested cooking times for different types of veggies. Additionally, if you are cooking a chicken recipe with the veggies at the same time, it’s ok to cook them at 375F (it just takes a little longer).

  • Asparagus – 20-25 minutes
  • Brussels sprouts – 30-35 minutes
  • Butternut squash (cubed) – 20-25 minutes
  • Cauliflower – 30 minutes
  • Red potatoes – 30-35 minutes
  • Sweet potatoes – 25-30 minutes
  • Zucchini/Summer squash – 20-25 minutes