Chicken and rice is always nice, especially when it’s served with a rich and tangy cream sauce fortified with sun-dried tomatoes and plenty of cheese.
Time: 3/5
Sun dried tomatoes are already packed with flavour, so little else needs to be done.
Effort: 4/5
Not too hard to cook, but kind of a hassle to sear the chicken in batches for meal prep.
Divorce Me Cleanup
Marry Me Chicken has been hanging around in the back of my head ever since it made the rounds on social media a couple years ago. But because the videos always show it being served with pasta, it never occurred to rice-obsessed me to try making it myself.
I don’t know why I had such a reservation in the first place. After all, I had no compunctions making a meal prep out of Bolognese sauce over rice. But when some sun-dried tomatoes nearing their expiration went for sale, the ideas clicked for me.
In truth, I was mostly interested in using the herb oil as a shortcut to a flavourful dressing for some nice pasta salad. But that would leave the tomatoes hanging, so into the Marry Me sauce they go.
I rarely make cream sauces. Whenever I do, it’s usually for a special occasion like a date night pasta of some sort. The richness and the calories demand some planning with the other meals of the week to fit them into my diet plan, but the use of lean chicken breasts instead of the thighs that I usually cook with made that easier than I expected.
Instead, what surprised me was how hard it was to get the oil off of my cutting board, after dicing up the sun dried tomatoes. The wooden board hung on to the grease and the smell for dear life, and I gave up on any further cleaning after several rounds of vigorous scrubbing with warm soapy water.
But that’s a small sacrifice for a sauce that is cheesy, creamy, tangy and savoury in all the right ways. The chicken breast was kept nice and juicy by butterflying them to shorten the cooking time, and having rice under everything meant that none of the flavour was going to waste.
Oh and speaking of waste, hang on to the oil that the sun dried tomatoes came in. It’s already rich in herby, garlicky and umami flavours that makes it a great shortcut for a low-effort pasta salad.
Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0
Dramatis Personae
Served 6.
- 1kg boneless skinless chicken breasts, butterflied or pounded flat
- 185g sun dried tomatoes, cut into strips or minced
- 4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 200ml cream
- 50g Parmesan, shredded
- 200ml chicken stock
- 1 tsp mixed dried herbs
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 900g sugar snap peas
- One medium carrot
Executive summary
- Prep all ingredients. Start rice.
- Salt and pepper both sides of the chicken breast. Brown on both sides in the pan and reserve.
- Sauté vegetables in the pan, season to taste, and reserve.
- Sauté sun dried tomatoes and garlic.
- Add chicken stock, dried herbs and cream to the pan, and bring to a simmer. Taste and adjust for seasoning, then stir in the cheese.
- If chicken breasts need more time, simmer them in the sauce. Otherwise, assemble and serve.
Play by Play
Always eat your veggies! Snap the stem off sideways from each sugar snap pea, and “unzip” the small fibrous sliver from the edge. Do this with every pea.
Getting all the ingredients together. Try to get all the chicken breasts to turn out roughly the same thickness.
Some pieces of chicken still ended up being thicker, so I needed to flip some earlier than others. That’s fine, because I want different portion sizes for different folks anyway.
Follow the chicken with the vegetables. This deglazes the pan, makes cleanup easier, and recycles flavour. Keep the heat decently high, a bit of that blistering and char tastes amazing.
Next it’s building up the sauce. Sauté the sun dried tomatoes until fragrant, then simmer in cream and stock briefly. Save the cheese for last, stir it in with the heat off to avoid it splitting.
While I waited for the sauce, I cut up and divided my chicken. To be honest this is a pretty decent meal prep in itself, but I’m going to upgrade it with the Marry Me sauce. Huzzah to the autumn bulk!
Dinner is served once I ladle the sauce over the chicken and a bed of rice. Three plates tonight, because we have company over.
Bon appetit! I love how the acidity of the tomatoes keeps the cheesy and rich sauce feeling relatively light and refreshing.
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