Monday, March 30, 2009

Sesame Chicken with Ginger Dressing



A warm sesame-crusted chicken served over a fresh bed of greens then topped with an Asian inspired sweet but hot dressing. If that isn't amazing enough, it's an incredibly simple recipe that's on your table in less than 30 minutes start to finish. That alone makes it a good recipe to have for those days when you don't have a clue what's for dinner and the kids are already walking through the kitchen saying they are hungry.

INGREDIENTS:

2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons ginger, minced
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
6 tablespoons sesame seeds
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
4 (1/4-pound) skinless boneless chicken breasts
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups mixed baby greens

DIRECTIONS:

1. To prepare the dressing, combine vinegar, soy sauce, honey, ginger, mustard, sesame oil, and red pepper in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture just to a boil, them remove from the heat.


***Note***The quantities listed make a very small amount of dressing. The quantity is more obvious in the vinaigrette bottle below. If you aren't watching calories and want the dressing to reach 4 servings, I would recommend doubling the ingredients that go into the dressing.



2. Combine sesame seeds, salt, and pepper in a small, shallow bowl or plate. Coat the chicken on both sides with the sesame seed mixture.

3. Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and cook, turning, until cooked through, 6-8 minutes on each side.




4. Transfer chicken to a cutting board. Cut each chicken breast on a diagonal into 1/2 inch slices.


5. Arrange greens on places. Keeping the chicken slices together, arrange each chicken breast over greens. Drizzle each serving with dressing and serve at once.



Recipe from Weight Watchers Great Cooking Every Day Cookbook; Modifications mine.

Yields 4 servings. Each serving contains 296 Calories; Total Fat 13.3g; Saturated Fat 3.0g; Cholesterol 101mg; Sodium 985mg; Total Carbohydrates 7.7g; Dietary Fiber 1.0g; Sugars 5.6g; Protein 34.1g; Vitamin A 7%; Vitamin C 3%; Calcium 3%; Iron 11%

NOTE:
This salad's dressing has heat. For my husband and I, heat is a good thing. For our kids, heat equals tears and a burned palate. The heat in this recipe comes from both the ginger and the red pepper flakes. If you would like less heat, decrease the amount of ginger to 1 1/2 teaspoons and the crushed red pepper flakes to 1/4 teaspoon. Even these amounts give too much heat for some members of our family--that's when we omit the dressing all togehter and instead serve the chicken and salad separately and pair it with rice or noodles.

2 comments:

Lainie said...

This is one of our family's all-time favorites. I love it!

Although, we just quadruple the dressing :D It's just too good...

Mamahollioni said...

Really? I knew the dressing was a small quantity, but I didn't realize you may need to quadruple it. Good to know.