Hello and a belated happy New Year. A big thanks to Ali Slagle and Mia Leimkuhler, my colleagues who covered for me over the holidays and wrote to you about slow cooker chili and dan dan noodles, pasta with andouille sausage and one-pot beans, greens and grains.
Now I’m back to talk about chicken, that versatile, quick-cooking, affordable weeknight warrior, since January is the month of resolutions and a lot of those start in the kitchen. Unless you’ve pledged to give up meat this month or this year or forevermore, there is a proverbial chicken for every pot.
Maybe you’re rebooting your cooking routines for the new year and giving meal prepping a go? Try these blackened chicken breasts, which you can cook and then use for sandwiches, salads, rice dishes, pastas and more.
Maybe you need ideas for feeding children, whether they’re high-drama picky or not? This mojo chicken with pineapple could be for you. (My older kid ate both the chicken and the fruit; the littler one stuck with the chicken.) Serve with rice.
1. Ginger-Lime Chicken
Broadly speaking, there are two directions in which you can go for winter cooking: deep and stewy, the dinner equivalent of huddling under a quilt, or light and bright, an optimistic attempt at warding off the blahs. This recipe from Ali is a perfect example of the second option: chicken you can make in 15 minutes that zings with ginger and lime. I’d reduce the ginger if I were making it for my kids.
2. Sheet-Pan Fish Tikka With Spinach
Zainab Shah takes the cooling punch and the spice of tikka marinade — made with yogurt, garam masala, chile powder, ginger and garlic — and applies it to fish in this simple and very delicious recipe. I use cod here, but any meaty, sturdy white fish will work.
3. Penne With Brussels Sprouts, Chile and Pancetta
“A keeper.” The commenters have spoken on this five-star Melissa Clark recipe, which you can easily make vegetarian by leaving out the pancetta. It’s not hard to slice up the brussels sprouts yourself, but buying shredded sprouts is definitely the move here.
4. Baked White Beans and Sausage With Sage
Kid-approved: One of our editors, Margaux Laskey, fed this salty-sweet recipe from a children’s cookbook to her daughters, who loved it and also made it again later (with a little adult help). I’d serve it to mine with broccoli on the side.
