3 Chicken Recipes in Under 30 Minutes - Perfect For Weeknight Meals

so at this time of year we're all looking for simple meals we can throw together in under 30 minutes that won't break the bank and taste delicious so today I'm going to show you three chicken recipes that I have in regular rotation when I'm thyme poor and just need some good nourishing home cooking and the last one is my absolute favorite so stick around for that let's get stuck in all right so the first I'm going to do is the classic chicken pesto pasta and we're going to make our own pesto now pesto is not that hard to make it's only take a few ingredients and when you make it fresh it tastes so much better but because we are time poor I'm gonna do this in under 30 minutes we need to be really conscious about our time so first things first let's get a pot of hot water on the stove bring into the oil and season it well with salt all right so we're just going to get our chopping done uh we're going to chop these little cherry tomatoes up but I think what's key with any of these recipes today is not to be afraid if you haven't got Tomatoes don't feel like you have to rush out and get them you could put some sun-dried tomatoes in here you can leave the tomatoes out all together it's the beauty of these recipe is use what you've got in the fridge all right tomatoes done we're going to slice this chicken quickly so I'm using skin off chicken thighs and we're just cutting them into strips about that big but as before if you want to use chicken breasts you can if you want to use some day old roast chicken you can use that use whatever you've got in the fridge you can want to leave the chicken out all right so if we think about timings our pasta is obviously going to take about 10 minutes to cook our chicken is going to take about the same amount of time so our water's not boiling yet as soon as that's boiling we'll start frying our chicken until then let's make our pesto [Music] all right our water is now boiling so it's time to start cooking the chicken big large pan over a high heat three tablespoons of olive oil on the bottom water's boiling rapidly and goes our pasta give it a stir lid back on so it comes back up to the boil so it passes in it's time to get our chicken in give it a season while that chicken's cooking it's time to make our pesto we have two cloves of garlic some grated Parmesan cheese our toasted pine nuts and you can use walnuts as well if you can't find or the fine nuts are too expensive don't forget to stir your chicken and your pasta all right two bunches of Basil season of salt not too much you got all that cheese in there and olive oil time to blend [Music] see what it tastes like pretty good needs a bit of lemon juice everyone's got a monkey or lemon lying around their fridge not too much delicious all right time to assemble this pasta passes al dente time to drown we're about to drain our pasta but let's get our Tomatoes heading through and the chicken we're gonna drain our pasta but we want to keep a little bit of our pasta water just in case we need it all right heat off time to add our pesto stir that through now the tomatoes will naturally let a bit of liquid out and that's going to help with the pasta or the pesto loosen up a bit and stick to your pasta better it's time to add our pasta back to the pot if you're a smarter person than I am you would have used a bigger pot but hey as we still are going to try and squeeze some more veggies in there but whoop some spinach into it now it looks like I have the impossible challenge this wool Wilt down I'm going to season a bit of black pepper check the salt levels I think we're good to go all right time to set it up um how good does that look a bit of extra Palm Never Enough cheese there you go first dish done this is so good and so quick to pull together the fresh pesto really makes it all right let's move on to the next dish chicken curry all right number two chicken curry super easy let's go like before got to make sure we're organized first things first let's get our rice cooking all right so if you don't have a rice cooker get one they're not that expensive so basmatic rice one cup when I say cup I don't mean you measuring cup just use whatever makes sense to you then we're going to rinse it really well two or three times throwing that last load of water off and then we will fill it up with one and a half of these all right so the rice is cooking time to get this Curry going two brown onions sliced nice and thin piece of ginger microplane about five cloves of garlic we're just going to put those through the market plan as well asparagus it's in season at the moment so it's cheap and I'm going to use it but feel free to use whatever you want broccolini green beans zucchini and finally we've left it to last the chicken chicken thighs again you can use chicken breasts drumsticks if you really wanted to though it will take longer to cook the drumsticks than the half an hour time that we have allotted nice thin little strips time to get cooking all right pot on a high heat high temp oil I got some grape seed here three tablespoons the reason I use this little portable cooker is because my cameraman Mitch gets grumpy when I keep cooking over there you can't get the right shot so everyone always asks that's why all right this is an optional little extra step but it's worth doing if you've got the spices in your cupboard a little cinnamon stick and say five green cardamom pods so that's seven uh to temper the oil so that flavors the oil before we put anything in it and you're going to want to take these out at the end I leave them in uh because I don't mind chewing on a cardamom pod but babe gets pretty annoyed when she gets one sometimes they burst all right time for the onions in you're gonna move them around we don't want them to get too much color season with salt and we're doing this on a high heat because we want this to happen quickly if you've got time you can turn the heat right down and do this really slowly all right we've just started to develop some color there they kind of half sweater down it's time to get our chicken in a little bit more salt time for the rest of the spices ground cumin garam masala kashmiri chili powder can't find kashmiri just normal chili powder will do and this is how you control the temperature as in spice temperature more more spice soy sauce quickly add our garlic and ginger and I can see our pan is starting to get a really good fond there now we're gonna be really careful we don't burn that how we control that is with a little bit of water and that comes right off add a tin of chopped tomatoes a third fill the can up with water shake it around so we've turned that heat right down we're just going to simmer this for six to seven minutes um before we check the seasoning and the last couple of minutes we'll add our asparagus so it's still nice and crunchy and we'll optionally finish it with a couple of tablespoons of Greek yogurt once the temperature is off all right let's just simmered away nicely time for our asparagus this only takes two minutes just to kind of warm through almost I really like this asparagus kind of almost a little bit crunchy throw that through I've just seen that cinnamon stick so I'm going to pull that out now okay heat off just let that come down in temperature a bit before we add our yogurt and just fold that through all right rice is ready time to serve see rice should cook perfect rice every time coriander a little bit more yogurt because I made it pretty spicy done another super delicious one even though I did make it really spicy but that's the beauty of this recipe is you can kind of make it your own Journey if you're not a huge spice fan just leave the chili out and it'll just be a beautiful floral Curry on to the next one all right the third dish and my favorite we've got a really nice pan roasted chicken breasts and we're gonna do a little roast veggie and couscous salad and then to bring it all together I'm going to make a ramesco now romesco is one of my most favorite sauces I love it it's always in my fridge usually I roast the capsicums because we've got a 30 minute challenge I cheated and we brought roasted capsicums not really cheating it's just working smarter not harder but let's get started first things first we're gonna get this chicken cooking all right so our oven is already on 180 degrees and we've got a pan on here that we can get in the oven put that on a high heat a little bit of olive oil in our chicken that's so the seasoning sticks a little bit of olive oil in the bottom of the pan season the chicken skin side now I always recommend using skin on chicken breasts if you can find it and then this pan isn't hot on purpose and that's going to help us render out the skin so straight into the pan skin side down and then that will come to temperature slowly we don't really need to move it now so now our pan has come up the temperature and we've started the sizzle turn your pan right down because we want to do this slowly all right onto the veg for the couscous we'll save this we'll cook this in a second and we'll do that sauce in the milk we're just going to dice up one red capsicum one yellow capsicum and a zucchini we're just going to saute this down now but before we do that we're going to pop our chicken in the oven so our chicken's just starting to color at the bottom which is what we're after we're just going to season the top with salt and some pepper I'm going to put it in 180 degree oven so we're gonna check that in 10 minutes it's probably going to take 12 to 15 minutes but we're after internal temperature of 70 degrees Celsius so in a pan a little bit of olive oil get it ripping hot and then we'll get our veggies in there season with salt all right now these have um sauteed down a bit we're just going to add a teaspoon of coriander powder and a teaspoon of ground cumin all right couscous it's pretty simple pour your couscous into a bowl a little drizzle of olive oil we're doing one and up 1.5 times of boiling water give it a little stir with a fork make sure every grain has got water nothing up the sides and put a little leave that for five minutes all right now we've got a nice color but we've still got bites to our veggies we're going to get them out onto a flat plate or a tray and we do that just to get some temperature out of them all right let's make our romesco so we have our roasted Peppers some almonds and some sun-dried tomatoes oh I missed two of that smoked paprika pinch of salt tablespoon of red white vinegar we'll check that for seasoning and see how acidic it is after some olive oil now we blend that let's have a taste that's so good that doesn't need anything else now sometimes if your red peppers are special if you roast them at home aren't drained well this can be a bit more watery than you want and if that's the case then you can thicken it with a bit of stale bread but I'm pretty happy with this consistency so we're going to leave it all right back to the couscous with a fork we're just going to break all those grains up we don't want any grains sticking together nice and light and fluffy I'm just going to sprinkle that over our roasted veg and stir our veg through it and there is the salad done just gonna wait for the chicken to cook and we can plate now we're gonna let these rest for a couple minutes even though I think I'm running out of time my 30 minute cook but we'll rest it for about five or six minutes time to Plate up couscous salad on the bottom carbo chicken beautiful and juicy nice amount of romesco over the top and there she is simple delicious three meals all under 30 minutes all delicious but for me this one is the winner this romesco is absolutely delicious and should always be in your fridge thanks for watching Legends subscribe if you're not like if you took anything from this video and we'll see you next week for another recipe peace thank you

Channel: Andy Cooks

Views: 418,578

Keywords: Cooking, food, dinner, lunch, meal ideas, dinner ideas, recipe, home cooking, food porn

Id: f79tzfqpumw

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023