E&W Healthy Recipes: Baked Jerk Chicken Breast and Potatoes

If you love spice, and love to marinade your meat and vegetables before you cook them, you may want to look into cooking with jerk seasoning. Unlike a lot of other sauces and seasonings, it contains very few calories (about 5 calories for two full teaspoons), and you really don’t need too much of it to give your food some flavor. Other sauces like teriyaki can contain up to 200 calories to spice up the same amount of meat that a couple of teaspoons of jerk sauce would.

Ingredients – Serves 2
0.5 pounds of lean chicken breast (you can substitute the chicken breast for any other sort of lean meat, but realize that it may that a little longer to marinade)
2 teaspoons of jerk seasoning
½ teaspoon of dry hot pepper (I personally like to use yaji, which is the pepper used for suya)
½ Knorr or Maggi seasoning cube
6 Irish potatoes
1 bunch of broccoli
½ pound of Brussels sprouts
½ a medium-sized onion
Cooking spray
½ cup of water
1 ½ cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of salt

Directions
Chicken: 

1. Mix the jerk seasoning, pepper, seasoning cube, a dash of salt, and ¼ cup of water in a bowl until the mixture is even
2. Slice up the chicken breast into strips, and marinade the chicken breast in the mixture, making sure the chicken strips are completely covered. Leave for about 30 minutes.
3. Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. 
4. Spray a baking pan with the cooking spray to prevent the chicken from sticking
5. Lay out the chicken strips on the baking pan, and pour whatever is left of the jerk mixture on top of the chicken strips
6. Chop the onion and lay it on top of the chicken
7. Put in the chicken breast strips for about 15 minutes and then turn them over
8. Leave them for another 15 minutes
9. Done!

Potatoes:

1. Start the potatoes after the chicken is grilled so you can also give them a little of that jerk flavor
2. Take the chicken out of the baking pan when it is grilled to perfection but leave the oven on at 400 degrees
3. Peel and cut the potatoes into cubes
4. Put the diced potatoes in a bowl, throw on a dash of salt, and shake the bowl around to make sure it reaches all the potatoes
5. Pour in ½ cup of the chicken stock into the baking pan and mix up the remnants of the jerk mixture with the chicken stock
6. Put the potatoes in the new mixture and put the baking pan back into the oven for about 20 minutes
7. Turn the potatoes around and leave for another 25 minutes or until cooked
8. Voila!

Vegetables:

1. Put the broccoli and Brussels sprouts in a saucepan, and cook for about 5-10 minutes
2. Sieve out the water left over
3. Alternatively, you can steam the vegetables
4. Easy peasy!

Gravy:

1. Bring the rest of the chicken stock to a boil in a sauce pan and add a dash of salt
2. In a separate dish, dissolve the flour in the rest of the water
3. Gradually pour the dissolved flour into the boiling chicken stock, and make sure you keep stirring for consistency as it boils
4. If it is not thick enough, dissolve more flour and add until you reach the desired level of thickness
5. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 10 minutes
6. It’s gravy, baby!

Serve your chicken, potatoes and gravy, and your veggies. Healthy, lovely, colorful, and delicious! Try it, and let me know how it works out.

Cheers Eights & Weights!

PS.
If you'd like to share your healthy recipes, please email us at editor@eightsandweights.com.