Preparation: 30mins | Cooking time: 90 mins

This is one of our favorite crockpot chicken recipes. Really easy to put together, and then you simply sit back and let the crockpot or slow cooker do its thing. We’ve made this as a family meal and we’ve made it to entertain friends – it’s suitable for any occasion.

Ingredients

• 1 x 1.5kg roasting chicken, jointed (ask your butcher to do this for you if you like)
• 1 tablespoon of oil (vegetable or sunflower would be ideal)
• 1 green pepper, sliced
• 4 streaky bacon rashers, rind removed and quartered
• 1 large onion, peeled and sliced
• 225g green beans, cut into 2 inch lengths
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup
• 300ml chicken stock (chicken stock cubes in boiling water will be fine)
• Salt and pepper
• ½ teaspoon dried basil
• 225g smoked sausage, sliced

Instructions

Heat the oil in a pan, then add the bacon and onion and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the paprika and cook for 2 minutes.

Put the chicken joints into the pan, coat them with the paprika and cook for 5 minutes.

Pour in the chicken stock, season with salt and pepper, and add the basil.

Transfer all this to the crockpot or slow cooker. Cook this slowly for around 5 hours or so. The chicken joints will slowly start to fall apart and take on the delicious flavors.

Stir in the sausage, green pepper, beans and tomato ketchup. Let it all cook for about another hour. To save time and messing about you can put these ingredients into the crockpot together with the chicken, the pepper and beans just may become a little too mushy. But that’s ok!

Serve! We like to eat this with some plain rice, easy. This is one of our favorite crockpot chicken recipes, it comes out perfect every time.

Preparation: 15 mins | Cooking time: 35 mins

A friend invited us round for a meal a few years ago and made us this quick chicken hash. I admit, we were a little dubious at first when they described what was in it!

Our fears were unfounded, I’m happy to say. Not only is this meal delicious (if a little unusual) it’s just so quick and easy to prepare. As quick chicken recipes go, it’s unbeatable.

This serves around 4 people.

Ingredients

• 450g / 1lb diced chicken (easiest to buy it diced from your butchers)
• 1 x 225g frozen peas (add to some boiling water for a minute to thaw)
• 50g blanched almonds
• 6 black olives (stoned and finely chopped)
• 1 can of condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1 small red pepper, diced
• Salt and pepper for seasoning

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C or Gas Mark 4.

Mix together the chicken, peas, almonds and olives.

Heat the soup in a small pan (don’t dilute it, heat it as it is), then stir in the chicken mixture together with the red pepper.

Add salt and fresh ground black pepper to season, then pour the lot into a casserole pot. Cover the pot and cook in the oven for around 35 minutes.

We tend to simply serve this with some rice. Nice and easy as quick chicken recipes go, and absolutely delicious!

Preparation: 5 mins | Cooking time: 90 mins

Don’t be put off by the cooking time with this recipe – it takes no time at all to prepare and then it’s just left in the oven to slowly cook. 5 minutes putting it all together and then relax! This is surely what quick chicken recipes are all about.

Our daughter simply hates tomatoes, and yet she adores this dish. Quite an endorsement!

This serves around 4 people.

Ingredients

• 4 jointed chicken legs
• Olive oil
• 1 fresh red chilli (finely chopped)
• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic (don’t take the skins off, leave them whole)
• Handful of fresh basil (dried will also do)
• 2 or 3 handfuls of cherry tomatoes, or a mixture of ripe red tomatoes and cherrys
• 1 tin of white beans (butter, cannellini, etc)
• Handful of potatoes (new potatoes tend to work best)

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C or Gas Mark 4.

Generously season the chicken legs, rubbing the salt and pepper into the skins with your fingers. They’ll taste fabulous!

Put the chicken legs in a small roasting pan or casserole dish. Then throw in the basil, the tomatoes, the garlic cloves and the chopped red chili. Don’t worry, the chili just adds a little heat, it won’t taste spicy.

Pour over a little olive oil and toss the ingredients together to coat with the oil and to mix it all up a bit. This should have taken you less than 5 minutes at this point – bonus!

Now pop the lot in the oven and simply leave for around 90 minutes. Resist the temptation to keep opening the door and poking it – you want everything to slowly bake together so the flavors develop and melt together. Yum.

After half an hour we throw in the beans and potatoes. This just bulks the dish out so we don’t have to bother making any separate accompaniments.

Then simply serve. You can squash the garlic out of the skins before you serve if you like, or leave them as they are if there are any vampires in your midst!

Absolutely lip-smackingly delicious, and one of the quickest quick chicken recipes I know.

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.