Chicken Tonight!

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Summer Vegetables. Get your family to eat more (local) vegetables.

We have to give props to the Pillsbury Complete Cook Book.  They’ve got some pretty decent meals, and they really are pretty easy. We really liked this particular recipe, and will probably make it again. As a pleasant byproduct, we also found out how to make our own chicken tenders. I guess I (J.) never really figured they were as easy to make as they are.

Stuff:

1/4 cup All purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
3 to 3-1/2 lbs cup frying chicken (we used straight up chicken breast – that’s how we got the chicken strips:)
2 Tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced (we diced)
2 garlic cloves, minced ( we chopped)
2 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped (yum!)
1 red bell pepper, cut into large pieces (ours were a little smaller…otherwise N. won’t eat them)
1 small zucchini, sliced
1 small yellow summer squash, sliced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil (gotta be fresh, we got ours from our countertop plant)

1) The book says shake the chicken, salt, pepper and flour in a plastic bag. We don’t condone that, unless its a bag you reuse all the time. Just put it on a plate and coat the heck out of the chicken.
2) Heat the oil in a large skillet or dutch oven over medium-high heat, until just hot. Add chicken, cook until golden brown on all sides. You can use this part of the recipe to make extra chicken tenders, and freeze them.
3) Remove chicken from skillet. Add onion and garlic to skillet; cook over medium heat until tender. Add tomatoes, and toss the chicken back in.
4) Cook for about 30 minutes.
5) Add bell peppers, zucchini, and summer squash; cover and cook an additional 5 to 10 minutes or until chicken is fork tender, and juices run clear. Veggies should be crisp-tender.
6) Plate it. Add basil.

Caveats
As the pan-fried breading that we got on our chicken was a little schmooshy (but still really good), I would remove the chicken strips, and not add them until you add the peppers and such, or not until served. However, in order to do this, you need to ensure that the chicken is, in fact, done when you remove it. If you’re using cut-up breast as we did, this won’t take long.

The list of veggies above is, in my opinion, just a list of suggestions. You could use all kinds of good stuff that is in season in your area, and have great results. You’re basically just stewing the tomatoes in the chicken-fried oil with the onions and garlic if there’s no chicken. You may need to adjust the time that you stew them since a lot of that heat won’t be going to the chicken, but you’ll get crispy chicken:)

Let us know what you think.