Preparation: 5 mins | Cooking time: 35 mins

I’ve eaten several versions of this meal in the past. It’s based a little bit on traditional American Southern cooking I guess, though with a LOT less fat!

The reason we love making it is because it’s just so quick and easy to make – just put everything in a small roasting tin, stick it in the oven and let half an hour or so do its magic.

Our children absolutely love this and so do we! Hope you enjoy it.

Ingredients

• 1 small/medium tin of sweetcorn
• 1 tin of white beans (we use butter beans, cannellini or even borlotti)
• 1 banana, mashed
• 4 chicken breasts (minus skins if you wish)
• 1 glass of white wine (save the rest for drinking with the meal!)
• 300ml pot of creme fraiche (or double cream if you don’t mind the fat)
• 2oz butter (low fat spread is ok too)
• 12 rashers of smoked bacon
• Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 220°C or Gas Mark 7.

Squash up half the beans into a pulp, using the back of a fork. Throw the sweetcorn and all the beans (whole and mashed) into a small roasting tray.

Turn the chicken breasts over and place a large spoonful of mashed banana into the back. Season the backs well with salt and pepper and then turn them over, placing them on top of the sweetcorn and beans in the tray. Season the whole tray a little too.

Pour the wine and creme fraiche (or double cream) into the tray and place little knobs of butter all round the tops of the chicken.

Cover the chicken breasts with the bacon rashers.

Bake the whole lot in the oven for around 35 minutes or so. The bacon will go really crispy, the cream and wine will reduce and cook into the chicken, and the sweetness of the banana will melt into the lovely savory flavor of the rest of the dish.

We tend to eat this with creamy mashed potato but you could add any kind of vegetables, or even just eat it as is. It’s just so delicious!

Hope you enjoy this as much as we do.

Chicken is one of the most versatile foods that you will ever find and it is also one of the easiest to prepare. From the basic baked chicken recipes to marinated chicken breast recipes, you will never have to invest more than about 30 minutes of your time to have a great meal. When I was a single man, this was the one food that my bachelor freezer was ever without!

In order to make these chicken recipes even easier, I highly suggest you invest in a FoodSaver. For right around $100, you can get one that is top of the line and will make your cooking much easier in the long run. They enable you to batch prepare your chicken as soon as it comes in and preserve it for cooking later. All you will need to do is thaw it out, drop it on a sizzle plate or baking sheet and throw it in the oven.

Baked chicken is about as easy as it gets. While you will want to add some flavor, you don’t have to do too much to a trimmed chicken breast to make it a tasty dinner. You can actually buy “fit and trim” chicken breasts that are pretty much ready to go right out of the package. When you are in a pinch, coat it with some McCormick’s Monterey Chicken Seasoning and throw it in the oven for about 18 minutes at 350 degrees and you have dinner. Prepare your favorite veggies and starch while the chicken is cooking and you have a healthy meal on the table.

A hearty chicken salad is always a great meal on the go. If you have the FoodSaver, pour some balsamic vinaigrette into the bag before you seal it and freeze the chicken like that. When you seal the bag, the dressing will saturate the chicken and when you pull it out to defrost it, the chicken will already be flavored. Bake the chicken off for 18 minutes at 350 degrees and then let it rest for about 10 minutes before cutting it. While you are waiting to cut the chicken, prepare your greens, tomatoes, cucumbers and some flavored croutons. Toss the salad in your favorite dressing and the julienne the baked chicken breast and lay it across the top. This is a salad worthy of any restaurant.

While these are only two quick ideas for baked chicken recipes, there are literally hundreds more that you can prepare in a snap. Chicken is far and away one of the most flexible foods you will ever find and is a lot of fun to experiment with. If you are a single guy, it will not only provide you with a good meal, but it is a great way to show off in the kitchen with your lady friend as well. When it comes to an easy meal, baked chicken recipes are definitely the way to go. Now I have a family and kids, they all love them too!

Preparation: 15 mins | Cooking time: 40 mins

We used to eat a really similar dish to this when I was a kid. While apples are often associated with pork, in this dish they add a delicious tangy sweetness to the chicken.

I added some cider on a hunch that it might enhance the flavor further and, my goodness, does it just! Absolutely delicious, and one of our family’s favorite baked chicken recipes. Nice and quick and easy. Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 25g/1oz butter
• 350g/12oz boneless chicken breasts (skinned and cut into strips)
• 100g/4oz French beans (sliced roughly)
• 1 stick celery (thinly sliced)
• 25g/10z walnuts (roughly chopped)
• 2 tomatoes (sliced – skinned and seeded too if you can be bothered!)
• 1/2 green pepper (thinly sliced)
• 1/2 red pepper (thinly sliced)
• 2 dessert apples (peeled, cored and sliced)
• 600ml/1 pint medium dry cider (too sweet will ruin things I think)
• Salt and black pepper
• 1 tablespoon corn flour, dissolved in a splash of the cider
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint

Instructions

Pre-heat your oven to 180°C, Gas Mark 4.

First off, melt the butter in a flameproof casserole. When it starts foaming (but before it burns) add the chicken strips and fry. Stir them for about 3 minutes but be careful not to color them too much.

Then add the beans, celery, walnuts, tomatoes, peppers and apples. Mix it all together really well, without breaking up the vegetables, and then pour in cider. Add a bit of salt and pepper for seasoning.

Bring it all to the boil then cover and bake in a pre-heated oven for around 35 minutes.

Remove the lid, stir in the corn flour. Lift the casserole pot out of the oven and bring the bake carefully to boil on top of stove, stirring all the time. This will thicken the sauce up nicely!

Remove from the heat. Garnish the top with the chopped mint and serve with roasted potatoes and buttered zucchini (or courgette) and/or carrots.

As baked chicken recipes go, I think this one’s a winner. Let me know what you think.

I’ve recently been looking for new recipes for our family to eat, instead of expensive, unhealthy convenience food.

My goal was to find meals that are inexpensive, nutritious and healthy, quick and easy to make, tasty and full of flavor, and (most importantly) meals that the kids will eat without complaining!

We’ve had wonderful success with chicken recipes, especially baked chicken recipes as part of our drive for quick, healthy meals.

Why have baked chicken recipes been such a hit with our family?

1. Nutritious and healthy.

Chicken is a low cholesterol, lean meat that’s high in protein. Particularly, the process of baking the chicken, rather than frying it, makes baked chicken recipes such a healthy option.

We’ve also found that eating baked chicken dishes is really helping us all eat a balanced diet. Chicken goes so well with so many different fresh ingredients that we’re eating lots more nutritious vegetables too!

2. Save time

All the baked chicken recipes we’ve found have been really quick to make, which is perfect after a long, hard day at the office. The ingredients are simply baked together, which means we can usually throw everything together in a slow cooker or crockpot in minutes and then leave it to bake to perfection.

Lazy AND time-saving!

3. Tasty and versatile

Our youngest daughter is quite a fussy eater so we have to be careful when preparing meals for her. However, we don’t want to be making separate meals for her if we can help it.

Baked chicken recipes are perfect for us. All the recipes we’ve tried have been really tasty and full of flavor, but best of all, the mild taste of chicken means we can please all the family all at the same time!

4. Easy to make

The baked chicken recipes we’ve made so far have been very simple to make, even for novice chefs like us. I’ve been really surprised at just how easy in fact!

Part of that is down to the wide availability of chicken which you can easily find already pre-packed and prepared in just the way you need it. But also, baked chicken recipes by their very nature are just so easy to throw together.

No fancy techniques, no complicated procedures. Just quick, easy, delicious meals.

5. Cheap and inexpensive

As a family we’re most definitely on a pretty strict budget these days so it’s important to keep our food bills right down.

Unlike the convenience meals we’ve been buying, baked chicken recipes are really very inexpensive. The chicken itself is very cheap compared to a lot of meat or fish, and the other ingredients are usually everyday vegetables which help us to economize even further.

6. Kids love them!

We’ve been amazed at how much the kids have enjoyed the baked chicken meals we’ve been making. Our eldest keeps nagging at us to make certain dishes again and gets upset when we tell him we can’t have the same meals every single night of the week!

The fact we can cook quick, healthy meals that everyone in the house will eat without complaint is miraculous!

I’ll be posting the best baked chicken recipes we’ve tried here on this blog.