Dinner Tonight

Pineapple Chicken Rice Bowl

I love these one bowl dinners. Talk about a 15 minute meal- if you do all the prep work (chop, cut, mix) ahead of time and put everything in baggies in the fridge- you can just throw it all together when you get home from work today.

This is a recipe that has room for trial and error as you can adjust how sweet you want this by adding more sugar. You can add less vinegar if this is too tangy for your taste. You can make the sauce thin or thick- its your call. You just start out with a smaller amount of cornstarch and add more as needed**. You can also cook it quickly for crispy veggies or slowly for soggy veggies.

Here is basically how I make this:

Chop in bite size pieces:
3 bell peppers (any color, but mix it up)
1 med size onion
4 med size carrots
4 flowerettes of fresh broccoli
3 Chicken Breasts (pre-cooked- grilled, fried,steamed...it's all good)

Place in large Saute Skillet

add- 1 can pineapple chunks (drained- keep the juice for sauce)

In a bowl mix the following using a wisk:
reserved pineapple juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup sugar (more or less based on how sweet you want this. OK to use Splenda too)
2 cups water
corn starch- about 3 tablespoons (but this will be adjusted based on how thick you want your sauce.)

Pour the sauce over the veggie, pineapple-chicken mix. Cook over med high heat- stir continually- until the sauce has thickened. This will give you very crunchy veggies.

If you want soggy veggies- put the lid on the pan, reduce the heat to low and let simmer for about 15 minutes or so but watch it that it doesn't get too thick and burn. If the sauce is getting too thick, just add a little water.

Serve over a bed of your favorite rice or if you are low carb- skip the rice.

One other option for this dish is to fry all of the veggies and pineapple in about 4 tablespoons of olive oil on high heat just until they have a nice stir fried consistency. Then add the sauce and heat til the sauce is thick. This is my favorite way of cooking it as it gives the dish more flavor.

**Ok about cornstarch...don't add cornstarch directly dry into the dish. Always mix with enough water to make it a sauce-like consistency, then pour that into the dish while cooking. If you put dry cornstarch in it will make lumps of cornstarch...not tasty at all.