Unpinned - One Pan Teriyaki Chicken Zoodles
Yup, my posts are monthly I guess. So this disaster happened a few weeks ago, but once I start spending all my nights over with the Boston Pops, cooking sort of...stops. I’m lucky if eating even happens. At least I get to have Sleigh Ride stuck in my head for the entire month of December! But I digress.
Sometime last month I was hungry, and I had zucchini. So I jumped onto my trusty old Pinterest board and looked for some zoodle-y goodness. And there waiting for me was the perfect recipe: One pan (!!) teriyaki (!) chicken (yum!) zoodles (yay!). A dish filled with things I like, no trip to the grocery store required, and ONE PAN? Certainly it’s too good to be true!
Hold on to your hats. Because it was indeed too good to be true.
Is the Pintrest photo complete bullshit? - Yup. Absolutely. Are those even pineapple pieces in the picture, or are they secretly just tiny carved pieces of tangerine that were hit with a blow torch until they looked juuuuuuuuust right?
Is it crazy expensive/time consuming/confusing? - It’s not expensive or super time consuming but this recipe actually sets a new record for confusing. More on that later.
Does it taste good? - No. It WANTS to taste good, it TRIES to taste good, and it only tastes...meh.
One Pan Teriyaki Chicken Zoodles
2 medium pieces boneless, skinless, chicken breasts (about 2/3 lb) cut into strips or chunks
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons cooking oil (olive or coconut oil for paleo)
5-6 medium zucchini, cut into noodles using a spiralizer or a vegetable peeler
1 cup chopped pineapple chunks (fresh, frozen or canned - I used fresh - can leave out for low calorie and swap in broccoli instead)
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce ( gluten free tamari or coconut aminos for a paleo version)
2-3 tablespoons honey, coconut sugar or low calorie sweetener of your choice (depending on how sweet your preference is)
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon grated ginger
1 tablespoon corn starch (or use arrowroot powder or tapioca starch for a paleo version)
2 tablespoons water, plus more as needed to thin out sauce
Salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes to taste, optional
Green onions, sliced thinly
Lunch containers, for meal prep
In a small bowl, whisk together all the ingredients for the sauce.
In a large bowl, season chicken with salt and pepper and drizzle 1-2 tablespoons of sauce over the chicken. Allow to marinate for 30 minutes.
Heat cooking oil in a large skillet on medium high heat. Add chicken and cook until lightly brown, about 1-2 minutes. Add in the pineapple chunks and cook for another 1 minute, until slightly softened. Pour in the remainder of the sauce and turn the heat to high. Allow sauce to bubble and thicken while stirring - about 1-2 minutes - add more water a little at a time (only as needed if sauce is too thick). Season to taste with salt, black pepper and/or red chili flakes.
*If cooking the zucchini noodles, add into pan and use tongs to toss and coat with sauce. Cook for 1-2 minutes until zucchini is just tender but still firm. Be careful not to overcook.
Remove from heat and drizzle extra sauce in pan over chicken and serve immediately. Garnish with green onions and sesame seeds if desired.
For meal prep: Divide evenly into lunch containers. Store in fridge for up to four days.
*do not overcook for longer than 2 minutes or else noodles will get too soft and mushy. You can also serve the chicken over raw zucchini noodles if desired.
I was very tired and not really in the mood to cook but also kind of broke and fairly hungry, so this picture is me feeling all of those things at once. Pardon my...face.
Our recipe today comes from Life Made Sweeter, which I’ve maybe used before? It has a whole bunch of ads on it and this lovely little note on every single page: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE SEE MY FULL DISCLOSURE POLICY FOR DETAILS. That’s cool! You go get that ad revenue, girl! The writer and mom-of-two Kelly is in charge. She seems super nice and I might scroll through her site again and try one of her desert ideas ‘cause there’s a ton and they look bomb.
Here’s what you need. Ah, yes. We meet again, my arch-nemesis cornstarch. This was the moment I should have known we were doomed. But no, surely the recipe will calm my fears?
WHAT!? Add more water if it’s too watery?! THAT’S NOT HOW WATER WORKS. THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. I’m realizing now that the text on the site and the text I’d printed off a few weeks ago no longer match. Did someone tip her off? Am I going crazy?
Yeah well it’s too late, we’ve taken the picture of the stuff on the counter so now we’re committed. So go ahead and pour our a nice 1/4 cup of soy...sauce...dammit. Out of soy sauce. GOD DAMN IT I’M NOT GOING OUT TO THE GROCERY STORE AGAIN.
But wait! You’re a grown woman living in her own place! That means you have TAKEOUT SOY SAUCE growing in the deep recesses of your fridge/junk drawers! Huzzah! The day is saved! (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.)
Now you shame yourself by not only using ‘the bear’ honey (is it even really honey?), it’s STORE BRAND bear honey. Please forgive me, Melanie. This is what happens when you peace out of the country and leave me to my own devices.
My bff garlic. Love garlic. Chop it up and get it everywhere, even some in your bowl.
My not-so-bff ginger. I’m only just starting to come around to ginger, and I prefer it minced tiny and hidden in dishes with lots of other flavors. So chop it up , get it everywhere, even some in your bowl. That’s how we roll.
CORNSTARCH. It promises you a world of gravy-like consistency, and delivers NOTHING. Screw cornstarch, I’m so fed up with getting my hopes crushed.
Chop da chicken, whisk da sauce. So far, looking surprisingly like an in-progress meal. At this point my hopes were high, tempered by my distrust of cornstarch.
Realize you’ve left a load of laundry finished in a dryer in the basement. Run down and rescue it, then woefully fold it so it’s not a wrinkled waste of effort. Sit for a moment and despair about how tired and hungry you are.
Cheer yourself up my turning some vegetables into strings! I ended up only using four of the zuchinni and then only 2/3rds of my zoodles because this was just too damn many zoodles. I’ve ruined so many recipes by not taking the extra time to let my zoodles sit out, press the water out, and dry up with salt, so I did ALL of those things. Dammit, I was going to have dry zoodles.
Make your chicken less raw. This helps prevent salmonella!
Toss your chunks (heh) into the pan as your chicken is approaching unraw. Save a few to nibble on later. Forget about them in the back of your fridge and throw them away three weeks later when they no longer smell like pineapple.
Throw in your overly-salted zoodles! Stir and mix and grunt as you try to get a wooden spoon through an impossibly tangled ball of zoodles! Rejoice ‘cause it smells good and looks like food! Panic as you realize you’ve been attempting to mix it up for more than the carefully allotted two minutes of cook time!
Put in bowl, add sesame seeds. At this point I was so hungry I would’ve eaten it no matter what, but looking back I’m perplexed by how much it looks like fake food. Not fake like photoshopped-magazine food, but fake like the plastic food you let children play with in their mini-kitchens, where they serve you empty plastic cups of tea and handfuls of plastic spaghetti as you sit cross-legged on the floor and pretend it’s very yummy.
My lazy roommate joined me when she smelled dinner. We both look cautious.
The sad reality: within minutes of being taken off the burner, the sauce all turned into water. Soupy, sad, not-delicious water.
Final final verdict: Sad. So sad. Winter sucks. I’m just going to subsist off of hot cocoa and wine from now on.
