Tuesday, January 14, 2025

This might just be our fastest chicken

Ginger-lime chicken, an Ali-Slagle go-to, is light and bright and ready in a flash.
Five Weeknight Dishes

January 14, 2025

A superb, speedy chicken

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.

Or maybe you just want to cook more efficiently, but not less deliciously. I have the perfect recipe all ready to go: the ginger-lime chicken below.

We've gathered 17 more fast chicken recipes for you on NYT Cooking, and I've picked four other non-chicken recipes that I'd be excited to have for dinner this week. Suggestions? Feedback? I'm at dearemily@nytimes.com and I read every note.

I'm also making:

A weekend feast — fesenjoon (Persian chicken stew with pomegranate and walnuts); sabzi polo (herbed rice with tahdig); salad-e Shirazi (cucumber, tomato and onion salad); mast-o khiar (cucumber and herb yogurt).

A white plate holds ginger-lime chicken breasts with wedges of lime. A bowl of rice is nearby.
Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist; Hadas Smirnoff. Prop Stylist: Megan Hedgepeth.

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.

View this recipe.

A blue platter holding golden fish chunks and wilted greens sits against a gray background. To the bottom left corner of the frame is a bowl with rice.
Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

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.

View this recipe.

Penne with brussels sprouts, chile and pancetta is shown in a skillet with a wooden spoon and spent lemon wedges nearby.
Dane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

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.

View this recipe.

Baked white beans and sausage are shown on a baking sheet set on a kitchen towel; a serving is portioned onto a blue-rimmed plate.
Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

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.

View this recipe.

Two servings of eggplant adobo are in pink bowls with white rice.
Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Samantha Seneviratne.

5. Eggplant Adobo

This one-pan vegetarian recipe from Kay Chun is a variation on chicken adobo, the Filipino classic, that swaps in eggplant for the chicken. The eggplant is a sponge that soaks in the silky adobo sauce, made with coconut milk, garlic, soy sauce and vinegar.

View this recipe.

Thanks for reading and cooking. If you like the work we do at New York Times Cooking, please subscribe! (Or give a subscription as a gift!) You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, or follow me on Instagram. I'm dearemily@nytimes.com, and previous newsletters are archived here. Reach out to my colleagues at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you have any questions about your account.

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