Fast and Healthy Chicken Recipes

By Food & Wine
Updated January 25, 2019
Credit: Greg DuPree
These delicious recipes include star chef Nobu's classic chicken teriyaki and juicy chicken smothered in gravy.
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Chicken-and-Andouille Étouffée

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Étouffée—from the French word for smother, stew or braise—is a classic Cajun dish of shellfish (or sometimes chicken) served over rice. Grace Parisi uses chicken breast, whole wheat flour and only three ounces of andouille sausage to make the recipe lighter.

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Chicken Smothered in Gravy

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This satisfying riff on smothered pork chops calls for skinless chicken drumsticks, which have only slightly more fat than breasts, as well as more zinc and iron and tons more flavor.

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Classic Chicken Teriyaki

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Nobu Matsuhisa’s easy teriyaki sauce is made with chicken broth, soy sauce, sugar, mirin and sake. It’s great over tender chicken breasts and charred frying peppers.

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Indian Barbecue Chicken

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For this sweet and tangy chicken, Marcie Turney blends tamarind and other Indian flavors into her molasses barbecue sauce.

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Chicken Breasts with Artichoke-Olive Sauce

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Simplest Chicken-and-Leek Stew

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Before cooking the chicken for his lovely stew, Jamie Oliver lightly coats the pieces in flour. Not only does that help the meat brown, it also thickens the tangy mustard sauce.

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Lemongrass-Cilantro Chicken with Honey Dipping Sauce

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Pings (simple grilled dishes), like these juicy grilled chicken breasts, are very popular all over Laos. Bruising the lemongrass is an essential step that helps release its flavor into the marinade, which can also be used for fish or pork.

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Lao-Style Chicken Baguette Sandwiches with Watercress

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This sandwich largely resembles a Vietnamese banh mi, due to its French-influenced baguette and crisp vegetables. But instead of the banh mi’s cilantro and pickles, the Lao version uses peppery watercress and grated fresh carrots—and a hefty dose of fiery chile-garlic sauce.

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Quick Vinegar-Braised Chicken with Garlic and Celery Leaves

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Inspired by Jordon Carroll's family recipe for chicken cacciatore, which uses vinegar rather than red wine (vinegar has fewer calories), the F&W Test Kitchen created this simple version. Be sure to get the chicken pieces nicely browned before adding the red wine vinegar, which will reduce to form a delicious glaze.

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Citrusy Mojito Chicken

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The tangy flavors in a mojito inspired these juicy chicken thighs, tossed in fresh grapefruit and lime juice with mint and cilantro and served with a bright salsa of grapefruit and lime.

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Chicken Salad with Piquillo Dressing

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Seamus Mullen slowly poaches chicken in a broth made with chicken stock, white wine and vegetables. He tosses the meat with salad greens, fingerling potatoes, carrot ribbons and Spanish Arbequina olives, which can be hard to find. To make this dish easier, roast the chicken in the oven instead of poaching it, and combine it with red-skinned potatoes and ubiquitous kalamata olives.

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Miso-Ginger Chicken and Cabbage

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Garlicky Lemongrass Chicken

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This spicy lemongrass paste is also wonderful rubbed on pork tenderloin or any firm, white-fleshed fish, such as snapper, sea bass or halibut.

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Chicken Breasts with Walnuts, Leeks and Candied Lemon

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Angela Hartnett flavors lean chicken breasts with leeks and preserved lemons, which deliver vitamin C and minerals like magnesium and iron.

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Mustard-Glazed Chicken with Arugula and Bok Choy

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Takashi Yagihashi glazes chicken legs in a mustard sauce; on the side are buttery bok choy and a generously dressed salad. For a healthier version, opt for chicken breasts instead of legs, cook the bok choy in a minimal amount of oil (no butter) and dress the salad lightly with oil, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar.

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Chicken Thigh Yakitori

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At Hong Kong’s Yardbird, the cooks don’t just cut up chicken thighs to skewer for yakitori: They separate the meat into several different muscles and grill each individually. “This allows each piece to be cooked at the same speed,” says co-owner Lindsay Jang.

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Crunchy Vietnamese Chicken Salad

Credit: Lucy Schaeffer
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Eric and Sophie Banh like to poach the chicken for this vibrant dish, then toss the salad with a homemade scallion oil. To save time, use store-bought rotisserie chicken and skip the scallion oil; the salad already gets plenty of flavor from the spicy, vinegary dressing and abundance of fresh herbs.

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Chicken Stir-Fry with Asparagus and Cashews

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Cashews contain oleic acid, the same monounsaturated fat that makes olive oil so heart-healthy. This chicken-cashew stir-fry’s Asian flavors come from a bright mix of fish sauce, oyster sauce and basil—and just a little oil.

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Chicken and Sun-Dried-Tomato Meatballs

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Pulled-Chicken Sandwiches

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This recipe relies on two time-saving, store-bought ingredients: rotisserie chicken and mango chutney, which adds a hit of instant flavor to the curry-yogurt sauce.

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Penne with Smoked Chicken and Mascarpone

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Warm Quinoa Salad with Carrots and Grilled Chicken

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Cat Cora’s nutritious quinoa is quick to make. Adding chicken makes it a great meal-in-one.

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Mexican-Style Chicken with Penne

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Adding a small amount of canned chipotle chiles in adobo (available at most supermarkets) makes a basic tomato sauce smoky and complex. Finishing the dish with queso blanco and chopped cilantro leaves intensifies the Latin flavor.

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Chicken-Meatball Yakitori

Credit: © Fredrika Stjärne
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Sylvan Mishima Brackett makes these meatballs, known as tsukune, with hand-chopped meat and skin from the best pastured chicken he can get.

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Creamy Piquillo Pepper and Chickpea Soup with Chicken

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The secret to this speedy soup is buying ingredients with lots of built-in flavor, like hummus and jarred piquillo peppers.

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Chicken Meatball-and-Orzo Soup

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Melissa Rubel Jacobson cleverly uses chicken sausage here: removing the casings, shaping the meat into balls, browning them and simmering them in chicken broth. If you have leftover cooked rice on hand, feel free to substitute it for the orzo.

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Kale Salad with Chicken

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“Kale salads are great with a dressing that relies on cured fish, like anchovies or the salted oysters I make, which I call ‘oy-chovies,’” says chef Spike Gjerde.

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General Tso’s Chicken

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Midtown Lunch’s Zach Brooks adores this sweet-spicy Chinese-American restaurant staple. The version here is lighter than take-out because the chicken is only lightly coated in cornstarch and is pan-fried rather than deep-fried.

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Rice-Noodle Salad with Chicken and Herbs

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Bubbly drinks in all their forms, from sparkling wine to fizzy ginger beer, inspire an effervescent bubble party. Pair them with a cool Vietnamese-style noodle salad tossed in a bright (and fat-free) citrus dressing.

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Cambodian Chicken-and-Rice Soup with Shrimp

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For this spicy, soothing and restorative chicken-and-rice soup, Ratha Chau prepares his own delectable chicken stock and roasts a chicken, which is then cut into large pieces and added to it. For the home cook, using prepared stock and preroasted chicken significantly cuts back on prep time.

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Indian-Spiced Chicken Salad Sandwiches

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Chicken Cutlets with Green Olive and Currant Pan Sauce

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F&W’s Melissa Rubel Jacobson loves chicken cutlets, but they always benefit from a little flavor boost—in this case, a simple, piquant pan sauce that combines salty olives, tangy capers and sweet currants.

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Rice Noodle Salad Bowls with Grilled Lemongrass Chicken

Credit: Greg DuPree
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ke rice paper rolls and banh mi sandwiches, rice-noodle salad bowls—often categorized at restaurants as rice vermicelli bowls or bun (“boon”, the name of the noodles in Vietnamese)—can feature many wonderful things, like grilled lemongrass chicken skewers. To make Vietnamese rice-noodle salad bowls, simply layer the ingredients in a bowl and let diners dress and mix up their own at the table. The vegetables provide refreshing crunch and herbal pungency, the noodles carry flavor, and the main feature and toppings are up to you. Grilled chicken skewers are the highlight here. Nuoc cham unites things with its Viet imprint.

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