Fun fact about me: I grew up on a poultry farm! My dad is a second generation poultry farmer and as you can guess, we basically grew up on all the different types of chicken: fried, grilled, nugget-style, in pasta – it’s all delicious! In this post, I wanted to focus on curating a few of my favorite chicken dinner ideas, especially as my apetite is changing in my third trimester.
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Chicken Breast Dinner Ideas
For the most of this blog, I’ll be discussing chicken dinner ideas with breasts. Not because I don’t like other types of chicken, this is just what we tend to use during mealtime.
If I’m cooking lunch – say chicken wraps – we love the frozen chicken tenders from Just Bare. I remember seeing this recommendation from our client Jamie at The Balanced Nutritionist and truthfully won’t be buying any other frozen chicken options. Ever.
If you’re active on TikTok (I’m not), I believe this is the brand that most people use to make Chick-fil-a dupes such as the chicken minis using their frozen chicken nuggets!
Easy Chicken Dinner Ideas For Two
Throughout this post, I’ll be highlighting the following recipes:
- Half Baked Harvest Chicken Tortellini
- Standard Grilled Chicken Breast with Sides
- Classic Chicken Quesadillas with Mexican Rice
- Modern Honey’s Asian Chicken with Rice and Broccoli
When I say that these recipes are on rotation around our house, I truly mean it! If we are making a dinner with chicken, it will likely be one of these four recipes.
Two of them are from my favorite recipe developers, Half Baked Harvest and Modern Honey. I love following their recipes because they are easy, have the “jump to recipe” feature (if you know you know) and are easily replicable for just two individuals.
Have you ever made a recipe that is just so hard to divide up into just two people?! I never knew how hard this was until my husband and I got married and I began cooking for the two of us. Around here, it’s a must to be easy!
What You’ll Need for These Chicken Dinner Ideas
I’ll be highlighting each recipe individually in regards to what specific ingredients you’ll need. For now, you’ll need the following kitchen equipment in order to make these recipes:
- An oven-safe pot
- A grill or skillet
- Pancake griddle or other flat top pan
- Additional pots / pans
I also want to preface this post before I dive into the recipes that I am not a cook of any kind 🤪 Simply, I do try to push my boundaries with cooking and try to try new things! So, if you’re like me, maybe you’ll love these too!
Half Baked Harvest Chicken Tortellini
Okay – this recipe is first on the list because we love it that much. Half Baked Harvest is one of our favorite recipe developers and we tend to source our recipes from her a ton. Her Chicken Tortellini is to die for. The main reason we love this recipe? It’s one pan.
When a recipe is in one pan, that means less dishes to clean which is totally great for me!
I also love that this recipe is a mixture of pasta, chicken and spinach. I’m a big fan of spinach in combination with chicken, because it’s so yummy while getting in those veggies. We actually batch-made this recipe for my college best friend when she had her baby and it was so easy to make in bulk!
Standard Grilled Chicken Breast with Sides
Let’s go back to the basics – who doesn’t love a simple grilled chicken breast?
We have this on rotation at least once a week or every other week. It’s easy (because my husband will grill for me 🤪) and full of yummy flavors.
When we grill our chicken breast, we tend to use some sort of marinade or seasoning. Our top choices are:
- Barbecue sauce marinade (usually combine several BBQ sauces for this)
- Roasted garlic & herb seasoning
- Catalina dressing marinade
Paired with our chicken breast is always one to two veggies and a carb. My favorites during pregnancy has been:
- Asparagus
- Parmesan mashed potatoes
- Mac & cheese
- Green beans
- Roasted potatoes
Classic Chicken Quesadillas with Mexican Rice
In our weekly rotation, we always include a mexican-based dish because we loooove some spice!
Our easy, go-to is chicken quesadillas. Why? It’s easy and makes for great leftovers! When I make chicken quesadillas, I use:
- Tortillas
- Siete seasoning (we like the hot)
- Red/yellow peppers
- Cheddar cheese
- Monterrey Jack cheese
- Cast iron skillet
To make these quesadillas, I usually cut my raw chicken tenders into bite-sized pieces, pour the Siete seasoning over them and combine onto a stove-top pan with olive oil and peppers. It takes around 20 minutes to cook this fully.
From there, I shred my cheese and heat up a skillet to assemble the quesadillas. I layer a tortilla first, then cheese, then chicken + peppers and fold.
My favorite part of this recipe is homemade mexican rice – this is the recipe I use and it’s delicious!
Modern Honey’s Sesame Chicken with Rice and Broccoli
Another great recipe developer that we love grabbing recipes from is Modern Honey. More specifically – we love her desserts like these brownies that I cannot get enough of.
For today’s post, I wanted to highlight her Sesame Chicken recipe. To be candid, I am not sharing this because it’s a one pan meal – it’s honestly going to take up a lot of space. But, the taste makes up for the mess!
I’m not the biggest fan of Asian or Chinese meals, but I love this recipe! We pair with white rice and steamed broccoli and it makes for a great balanced meal.
Make Life Easy with Healthy Chicken Dinner Ideas!
Chicken is a great source of protein and such an easy meat to prepare in different ways. Pasta, by itself, and grilled – you name it, I like it! These chicken dinner ideas are great for days when you simply don’t feel like cooking at all.
During the third trimester, it’s crucial that I’m continuing to get my nutrients through my food sources and supplementing when I can. I will be completely honest here and say that the third trimester has reminded me of my first trimester in regard to eating habits – many items I still cannot stomach (I miss you brussel sprouts) but I do my best when I can! Having easy to prep meals make this better when I know I’ll like a meal when I cook it.
