Chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and cheese is a popular online recipe. Food blogs are filled with photos of tender chicken oozing with unctuous warm cheese and grassy dollops of creamy spinach over mountains of pasta.
Busy weeknights are not conducive to carving pockets into chicken breasts or pounding out cutlets, assembling the filling, stuffing the breasts, stitching it all together with skewers and toothpicks, and making a sauce as well. It’s a lot of effort when you are simply trying to get dinner on the table.
By changing the cooking method from baked to sauteed and backing off some of the more indulgent ingredients, we’re able to enjoy the core flavors of chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and cheese in a lighter and more healthful quick and easy skillet supper. It’s stuffed chicken breast flavor without the fuss that’s also good and good for you.
Skillet Spinach Chicken
Lean chicken and vegetables are the stars of this show. When draining the spinach for this dish, do not drain it completely; the residual water will help steam the chicken.
In this recipe, the traditional pasta flavor comes from pearl, also called Israeli, couscous. Regular couscous, which has a smaller diameter, can be substituted. You can also add cooked brown rice, farro or quinoa to up the nutritional ante of the starch.
Olive oil nonstick cooking spray
1 1/4 pounds chicken tenders, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 10-ounce box frozen spinach, thawed and lightly drained
1 cup grape tomatoes, halved
3/4 cup (2 ounces) freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
1 ½ cups cooked pearl couscous
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Spray with nonstick cooking spray. Add the chicken without crowding. Season with salt and pepper. Quickly saute on all sides, about 3 minutes. Move to the side of the skillet.
Add the onion to the empty side of the skillet. Cook, without stirring, until it starts to steam, about 2 minutes. Stir to combine with chicken.
Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 45 to 60 seconds. Add spinach and stir to combine. Cover and cook over medium-high heat until the chicken has cooked through, about 3 minutes. Add grape tomatoes and stir to combine. (The residual heat will warm and soften the tomatoes.) Add Parmesan cheese and couscous and stir to combine. Serve immediately. Garnish with additional Parmesan cheese, if desired.
Serves 4.
Per serving, with pearl couscous: 336 calories (percent of calories from fat, 22), 41 grams protein, 23 grams carbohydrates, 3 grams total sugars, 4 grams fiber, 8 grams total fat (3 grams saturated), 116 milligrams cholesterol, 378 milligrams sodium.
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