You can easily impress your guests (and/or yourself) with this Slow Cooker Beer Chicken that takes minimal effort to make. Throw it on a bun with some BBQ sauce, or eat it plain with some rice and veggies. Your call.
All you need to get started are two key ingredients:
As of April, I have been prepping lunch on Sunday’s for the week. The first recipe I made was this Slow Cooker Avocado Chicken Salad Recipe, and since then I have been making a wide variety of slow cooker chicken dishes to eat with rice and vegetables all week. It’s pretty healthy, very simple, and extremely affordable to do. It can get a little bland though when repeated over and over again. For the first time this past Sunday, I decided to take the rice to the next level and make this Easy Cilantro Lime Rice to enjoy with some chicken and vegetables.
It was good, put bluntly, and reminded me of Chipotle’s popular rice offerings. Was it better than Chipotle? I don’t want to call out one my favorite restaurant chains, but I think it gave it a run for its money. And speaking of money, this option is definitely more economical, costing only $0.80 per serving.
Lunches are tough to plan for the week, not to mention actually prep and cook. It can be hard to find the motivation some Sunday’s to spend time in the kitchen making food for the work week instead of enjoying the last few hours of the workday. This past week, I was feeling especially uninspired. Just what you want to hear at the beginning of a recipe post.
I had already made Basil Quinoa and Chickpea Salad with Tahini Dressing, Healthy Buffalo Chicken Bites, Slow Cooker Avocado Chicken Salad, and Spicy Soy Sauce Basil Chicken, I was running out of ideas, to be honest. Then hit it me, I remembered a simple classic from my childhood – BBQ chicken with rice. I had BBQ chicken and rice every night throughout middle school and high school. Okay, not every night, but once a week easy. The idea made me excited to whip up my own version.
When revisiting this childhood classic I wanted to keep it easy and simple, and nothing is easier than the slow cooker. You could make BBQ chicken with two ingredients – BBQ sauce and chicken. I was looking for something a bit more flavorful, so I added some onion, garlic and vinegar to the slow cooker to spice up this Easy Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken while still keeping the recipe simple with only 5 ingredients.
This past weekend the weather actually warmed up a bit in Chicagoland, I think it actually hit 60 degrees at one point. Not bad for early March. It motivated me to start embracing the warm weather and begin breaking out some Spring recipes, the first of which is this delicious and simple Spring Arugula Salad with Homemade Balsamic Dressing. It is the perfect Spring lunch, and is great as a side or an appetizer for dinner as well. This easy salad has 5 ingredients:
The homemade dressing is just as simple, and it takes this salad to the next level of salad greatness. It’s a simple balsamic dressing made with two parts olive oil and one part balsamic vinegar. I also threw in a touch of honey, dijon mustard, and salt and pepper for good measure.
Read moreSpring Arugula Salad with Homemade Balsamic Dressing
Today you’re going to learn how to make French press coffee at home. Brewing coffee at home is a great way to save money. It’s actually the first thing I would tell you to do if you were looking to cut costs in the kitchen.
You know why?
You can drink coffee at home for one year for about the same price of buying coffee from a coffee shop for one week.
Yes you read that right, the savings potential is through the roof. If you’re interested in learning more about just how much you’d save, my long-winded rant can be found here.
I’m not necessarily a huge baker. The last time I baked it was about 3 months ago to make these Homemade Pop Tarts with Honey Blackberry Filling. They were awesome, but I decided to switch it up this past weekend and make these No Bake Peanut Butter Balls for 3 great reasons:
So, instead, I whipped up some No Bake Peanut Butter Balls. They turned out to be a great summer dessert that were easy to make (only 6 ingredients!) and affordable too.
I have been on a burger kick lately. They have always been one of my favorite foods, specifically bison burgers, but bison burgers can be expensive when ground bison is not on sale. To further fuel my burger kick, I bought a pound of ground beef at the grocery store last weekend and planned on making burgers all week. Typically, I’ll settle for ketchup and mustard on top of my burgers – just plain ketchup and yellow mustard. Sounds basic, but its a classic combination that just works. However, feeling inspired by a recent sauce I made – Easy Arugula Walnut Pesto, I decided to up my sauce game once again for these burgers and learn How to Make Aioli at Home.
When making burgers, I usually try to switch up the flavor combinations every time to keep things fresh, but these Healthy Bison Burgers really stood out because of their simplicity. => Want a full list of Burger recipes? Get here All Recipes from Meredith Corporation.
Bison burgers have quickly risen as one of my favorite foods. Bison is healthy and delicious, but can also be expensive. I did my best to battle the costliness of these Healthy Bison Burgers by “stretching” my ingredients to get the most bang for my buck. I made 1/4 burgers seem slightly bigger by mixing some mushrooms into the ground bison mixture. Mushrooms have a great meaty texture and take on the flavor of the burger, and it worked like a charm in this recipe. The one watch out with mushrooms is that they absorb water, so make sure to soak them in some olive oil to prevent them from making your burgers dry.
Pasta with Garlic and Oil is a classic Italian dish – also known as spaghetti aglio e olio. The best part about this recipe is not its a.k.a. status, but its simplicity. You only need three ingredients to get started, and you probably already have all three in your pantry.
This Pan Seared Salmon with Soy Ginger Glaze is the perfect weeknight meal. It’s easy to make, affordable and the glaze takes the flavor to a whole new level. Plus, the entire recipe only has 7 ingredients! It’s a great recipe to make for your family or just for yourself – it heats up surprisingly well for being salmon (just try not to do it at work).
My first blog post ever was actually a salmon recipe. The stock photo is hard to look at, but the recipe itself is very good. It’s a go-to recipe of mine that I cook all the time, and if you like this Pan Seared Salmon with Soy Ginger Glaze recipe then I suggest you check out the original economical salmon recipe too.
Back to the current salmon recipe…
Blackened Chicken Pita with Mint Yogurt Sauce go great together, like MJ and Pippen, Brady and Belichick, Chandler and Joey, Shrek and Fiona. You get the picture. The heat of the chicken is matched perfectly by the cool tang of the mint yogurt sauce. Each only having a handful of ingredients makes this flavorful pita recipe super easy to make.
I first made blackened seasoning last summer over the Fourth of July. I was grilling at my then Fiance’s (now Wife’s) parent’s house and drinking my favorite beer (manly) and covered the entire chicken breast in black pepper before tossing it onto the grill. Plain and simple, yes, but the result was pretty dang good.
This time around, I upped the seasoning game slightly and added some other spice and flavor to the mix, including red pepper and paprika. The combination was quite tasty, and hot. If you like spicy food then this recipe is for you! It’s not quite grilling weather yet, so I baked this in the stove, but cooking it on the grill would work great too. You also do not need a cat measuring cup to make this recipe, but if you’re into it the Amazon link is below.
Valentine’s Day is a great time to showcase your cooking skills, so for those of you who will be cooking at home, I wanted to provide some of the best Valentine’s Day Recipes on the web right now. Get ready for a lot of heart shapes and red velvet recipes – to no one’s surprise.