5 Easy High-Protein Dinners Anyone Can Make | Allrecipes

With the new year and new you, I've got new recipes. You're only five ingredients away from five new high-protein dinners. They also are high in fiber, because now we know that's important too. For me, the best way to stay on track is to keep things easy and approachable, and that's what I've got for you today. I'm starting off with skillet chicken and white bean stew. Five ingredients here, bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. This is my favorite thing to start a one-pan meal with. White beans, cannellini beans, whatever kind of bean you like. Cherry or grape tomatoes, a great flavor shortcut for some cheese, and then baby spinach. This gives us that added nutrition to the meal and round it out. Per usual, when it comes to my ingredient-counting dinners, you know that pantry staples do not count. Pantry staples include things like onions and garlic, which you should have at all times. Of course, all our dried spices, salt and pepper, olive oil, butter, you get the idea. Stock that pantry. Then you only need five ingredients. Let's go. I'm gonna start by seasoning and then crisping up my chicken thighs. This is what's going to lend the flavor throughout the whole dish. Chicken thighs are one of the best, most affordable proteins, and chicken in general is high in protein. So I'm just gonna season it simply with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Just measure with your heart, people. Don't feel like you have to stick to the exact recipe measurements. All right, and then this goes down into a skillet. I'm gonna add a little bit of olive oil just to help them get going. You're gonna place these skin side down and let them cook for at least five minutes without touching them. Skin automatically tightens up. Once it's down, season the other side, and then you gotta learn to walk away. I would say go prep the other ingredients, but other than chopping onion, you really don't have to do anything else. Cook it for about one minute on the second side and then take them out. They're not gonna be cooked at this point. Some of this skin shrunk a little too much. That's because my pan was a little hot when I first put it in, but it's fine. It has served its purpose. Look at all that great flavor it has rendered out. I'm just gonna keep that in there because it's going to cook the rest of the dish. Going in with the onion. The onion's gonna help lift some of that flavor off. I'm gonna give that just about a minute. Now we're making the stew. To further lift the flavor, we're just gonna go in with our tomatoes. You can cut these in half if you want. I'm just gonna cook them down. Once they start to burst, they'll release that acid to lift off the rest of the flavor. This is how you clean your skillet. Also going in with about a quarter cup of water. Now we're just gonna cook this until those tomatoes start to break down and burst a little bit. And now we go in with our white beans. Gonna go in with about another quarter cup of water. We're gonna get a good bit of flavor, but I'm gonna add in just a little bit more salt and pepper here. This is gonna be one of those good, rustic meals. It's still cold outside. This is gonna warm you up. I promised high protein, which we are definitely getting from the chicken and also the beans, but the beans also give us that fiber we're looking for. So I'm gonna add the chicken back in at this point and let it finish cooking. So it just kind of simmers in this. It's gonna give off a little more liquid too as it cooks. Any juices that have accumulated, let them go in. And I'm gonna cover this and let it simmer until that chicken's cooked. I love a one pan meal. It's been about 25 to 27 minutes. That chicken is cooked through and look at all those juices that have come. This is a true stew now. I'm gonna take the chicken out. Gonna stir in that spinach. I'm doing the whole box because we're trying to get all the fiber we can and it's gonna cook down to nothing. And then I'm going in with Boursin cheese. This is just like the biggest flavor booster. It's gonna add creaminess. Even though it's pretty creamy from the beans, you could really use this as an optional ingredient. Half is really all you need. You can put the whole block in if you want to. That's just one of those secret shortcut ingredients when you're trying to cut or minimize ingredients. Doesn't that look good? And it doesn't look like it was only five ingredients. We're talking the chicken just created so much magic in this one pan. Give it a little taste. Mm, my God, that is good. Might just add a little more pepper. Let me show y'all how good this looks. And if you're not watching your carbs, get the crusty bread. This is even better than I thought it was gonna be. Start with our white bean stew. Chicken on top. You can garnish if you want. We're just keeping it at five ingredients for this one. High protein, high fiber. 100% delicious right here. How do it taste? Let me tell you. It's really hard to mess up chicken thighs, y'all. Look how perfectly juicy that is. Mm, if you're not cooking with chicken thighs very often, you are really missing out. Definitely the best cut of chicken. This is comforting. It's so full of flavor. It does kind of make you feel good. It doesn't feel like you're eating anything unhealthy. It's definitely hearty also. Besides the little bit of borscht and cheese, those beans lend so much creaminess. You get the juicy burst of tomato. Chickens cook perfectly. I hate when we start off so good because it's gonna be hard to beat this one. But I'll try. Next up, five ingredient salmon teriyaki bowls. This dinner incorporates a couple of great shortcuts. Of course, we're starting with salmon. High protein indeed. It's also one of the easiest fishes to cook. Edamame, just frozen shelled edamame. This is gonna add fiber and more protein. I'm also using frozen pre-cooked jasmine rice. You can make your own. You can just buy the pouches. You can do whatever. You wanna get a good store-bought teriyaki sauce, not one that's like super thick. I like this one that has a bunch of seeds in it. It's on the thinner side. And then avocado. This is just gonna add great flavor, a little creaminess, and it's gonna add to the texture moment to make that perfect bite. Start out by lining your baking sheet with a little foil because teriyaki sauce is sticky. Okay, when you go to cook it, you don't want that mess in your pan. You can give it a spray also. And you're just gonna place your salmon fillets right down on it. And I'm gonna do just a little bit of salt and pepper. And then you're gonna drizzle a little bit of your teriyaki sauce on top of the salmon, and then we'll use more later to top our bowls. And you can just rub it or brush it over the top. This is gonna help give the salmon a good crust. So this goes into the oven 450 degrees for just about 10 to 12 minutes. You'll know your salmon is done when it starts to kind of have that white stuff kind of come out the sides a little bit. So it's got its own little internal thermometer. And that gives me enough time to make our rice and edamame. And you're just gonna prepare both according to package directions. Look at this. And you can see what I was saying, how the white is kind of coming out the sides a little bit. That tells you it's done. Rice on the bottom. See, I like doing bowls and things like that because they're kind of build your own, and my kids love that because they can make it with whatever toppings they like. Edamame on next. About a half a cup is a serving here, which is like nine grams of protein and eight grams of fiber. It's good. All right, then I'm gonna take one salmon filet per bowl and just kind of flake it on top. See, it just happens so easily because it's cooked so perfectly. Now I'm going in with some avocado. This is really just gonna help make this. You know, we've got all kinds of things going on. That edamame is gonna be slightly like crisp, tender. Then you're gonna have this creamy avocado. It's kind of buttery, and it goes great with that kind of tangy teriyaki sauce. I've warmed up a little more of that teriyaki sauce to drizzle over the top. Optional garnish, but I'm going for it. Some green onion. That looks divine. Salmon teriyaki bowls, only five ingredients. I'm excited about this perfect bite. You can probably just go straight in and come out with it. Mm, mm. This has so much flavor. That salmon is cooked perfectly. It's so buttery. This is another one that just kind of makes you feel good when you eat it. You feel healthy. You feel satisfied. That's the family-friendly. Teriyaki, you know, has a little bit of a sweetness. You can add a little kick to balance that out. Mm. Next up, you know I've always got something for that Taco Tuesday. This five-ingredient dinner is pork and black bean tostadas. Lots of protein from the pork. I'm doing pork tenderloin. You could also do a pork shoulder. Ingredient number two, black beans. To season it, taco sauce. You could also do enchilada sauce. Something that's really like concentrated and potent is what we want here. We're gonna serve it up on tostada shells. I know sometimes when we're doing high-protein, we're doing low-carb. These are not that bad. And they're just freaking delicious. And then, you know, one of my favorite shortcuts when we're trying to make five-ingredient dinners are the bagged salads because they have multiple ingredients within one bag. And this guacamole crunch is gonna be delicious on top of this. And it rounds out the meal. Just gonna simply place our pork tenderloins straight into the slow cooker. And then we are simply pouring over our taco sauce. This kind of gives us that taco seasoning packet, but also the liquid tomato base, like a salsa. So it's kind of like a two-for-one special here. We can check for seasoning later, but I'm just gonna pour this whole bottle over the pork, set it, and forget it. You can go low here, four to six hours, or high for about three hours. Pork tenderloin is done. Just gonna transfer it to another cutting board and kind of shred it up a little bit. Then to this flavorful liquid, I'm gonna go in with our black beans and kind of let them soak in some of that flavor. Gonna give them a little bit of a mash. That way I can kind of spread it onto the tostada. And then it's really gonna absorb some of that liquid. That's happening. I'm gonna shred this pork up a little bit. All right, so after it's shredded, I'm just gonna go in with a knife and kind of chop it up a little bit so that the pieces aren't too long. That is ready to go. Just gonna transfer it to a dish. So I like to set this up kind of like stations, like a taco station. I'm gonna spoon some of this juice over it. Do that before you put the beans in. Some of the juices keep that moistened a little bit. And we build our tostada. Put some beans on the bottom, top it with our good pork, and then our salad mix, whatever Southwestern salad mix you want right on top. I'm going on with a little more taco sauce. Dinner number three is done. High protein, high fiber. It's really not that hard to get protein and fiber and still make it exciting. Mm, that is so satisfying because of all the textures going on. This is such a good, hearty dinner. It's not gonna leave you hungry after a couple of these. I mean, this is a fun twist, an easy five-ingredient twist to your Taco Tuesdays. A flavor twist on this next five-ingredient dinner, how about chicken curry stuffed sweet potatoes? This is the perfect something different you're looking for in your weekly rotation. It's gonna be healthy, it's packed with protein and fiber, and most of all, flavor. So the five ingredients here, we're gonna use just precooked chicken. You can do this ahead of time in your meal prep, or you can buy a rotisserie chicken and cut it up. And of course, sweet potatoes, one per person. Some cilantro, that's gonna be our green veggie. Store-bought shortcut is some madras curry sauce. This is gonna go so well with the sweet potatoes. It's really gonna boost just like a simple kind of plain chicken and sweet potatoes. It's got the coconut cream in there, but also garlic, ginger, lots of spices. I mean, that's gonna be good. And then for some added nutrition, bulk it up. Fiber and more protein, some chickpeas. Start by getting your potatoes cooking. You can do this in the oven or in the microwave. Give them a little poke. I've already washed them. And then I always cook sweet potatoes on foil-lined or parchment-lined baking sheets, because they tend to ooze and get a little sticky. In we go. Those usually take about 45 minutes. I'll go ahead and get my simmer sauce going, and this is what we're going to stuff the potatoes with. So I am gonna use my favorite pantry staple that goes in almost every single thing I make, an onion. This just kind of helps take something that's store-bought and make it taste a little more homemade. All right, so then everything else just gets mixed together in a pan. In a skillet, add some olive oil. Get the onion going. Gonna add just about a half a teaspoon of salt to help it soften up. And then you wanna cook this down until the onion is translucent. That way you don't get a crunchy bite of onion, because the sauce isn't gonna take long to cook. And also, that's where the maximum aromatics can kind of leach out into the rest of the dish. So just let it go about four minutes. All right, when it's starting to get translucent, go in with our simmer sauce. Then I'm gonna add a little water to the jar, kind of stretch the sauce a little further. Oh my God, immediately it smells so good. And then I'm also going in with the chickpeas. A lot of times when you do a chicken curry like this, it has cubed up sweet potatoes in it. So the fact that we're serving it in a sweet potato just makes sense. All right, and then I'm also just gonna go in with the chicken, and I'm just gonna let it kind of simmer in here for about 10 to 15 minutes. This is a meal where if I was making it for my kids, like my son's not gonna eat it like this, but he will eat the chicken, he'll eat the sweet potato, and he'll just keep that separate. So I'm not cooking two dinners, he's just missing out. Just gonna cover it and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. This one may be the easiest of the day. Definitely the most interesting. All right, we have our baked sweet potato. Give it a smash, fluff it up a little bit. And we're gonna load it up, because we've gotta get our protein in, you know? You wanna get a little bit of everything. The cilantro is what's gonna make it. If you are one of the people that does not like cilantro, you gotta put something fresh on top. Green onions would be a great substitute here, but this is gonna be so good. You could also serve this with some green beans, or a salad, but I had to keep it five ingredients. This right here is a complete meal. There's gonna be so much flavor in that sauce that you really don't have to add any extra seasoning. Look, straight in with the fork, straight out with the perfect bite. Mm, mm, I'm telling you, if you love a sweet potato curry, or really any kind of curry, this is the perfect dinner. This, to me, is the ultimate new year, healthy dinner, looking for something different to break up the weekly meal rut. Chicken curry sweet potatoes, five ingredient dinner, is the meal for you, mm. For my final trick, I am bringing out some carbs. With this high-protein meal, we are doing a five-ingredient high-protein pasta bake. Starting with the pasta. You wanna choose whatever high-protein pasta you like. I couldn't really find a lasagna noodle that is high-protein, so I'm doing a rigatoni. There are lots of protein options out there. This is the one I like, because it tastes more like pasta. I know it doesn't have the most protein of any. They have these, that are like 20 and 21 grams of protein per serving, but you gotta look at the servings to really make it make sense. All pasta has some protein in it, and if you're looking for extra fiber, you may just want a whole wheat pasta here, and they do have the whole wheat lasagna. You do whatever you like. I'm gonna do whatever I like. Ingredient number two, store-bought sauce. If you make your own, you may have more ingredients than five, but shortcuts when it comes to five-ingredient dinners. Cheese, I've got the Italian blend cheese, because it's more than one variety of cheese, and I can keep the ingredient list down, and then instead of ricotta cheese, we're gonna do cottage cheese. I like to find the super small curd, or do what I do. If you find the large curd, just whip it up a little bit with your blender or food processor, and then you're gonna get more of the texture of that ricotta cheese, but this has a lot of protein in it, 13 grams per serving, but the bulk of our protein is gonna come from our meat, so we have three really good sources of protein here. All right, so I'm just gonna start by cooking my pasta and my meat. I'm using a lean ground beef, so I'm gonna start with just a little bit of olive oil in to, you guessed it, cook some onion. Just gonna boost that flavor a little bit, since we're using a store-bought sauce. All right, when that gets going, go in with your ground beef. Just gonna add in just a little bit of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. All right, and then once this is getting browned and crumbled, then you start in your sauce. What's good about sheet pan lasagna is that it's gonna cook in less time than regular layered lasagna, plus you get all the crusty bits on the outside. That's what makes it so good. While that's cooking, I'll go in with my pasta. You're just gonna cook it till it's al dente and you wanna salt the water. That'll take about 10 minutes. This'll take about 10 to 15 minutes, and then we'll get it on the sheet pan. Eating healthy and getting facials. You're gonna return your pasta to the pot and stir the sauce in. You could stop here, but why? About to make this triple delicious. On a sheet pan, drizzle some olive oil. You want this to go all around the edges because this is what's gonna help that pasta get a little bit crispy. All right, then down goes our pasta. Alternatively, you could do this in just a baking dish and make it like a layered baked pasta, like just baked ziti, but I'm telling you, this really just gives it kind of like a whole different experience. And because we're using high-protein pasta, sometimes the texture is not the same as our traditional pasta that we know and love. So to make it kind of extra crispy, just kind of, I don't know, kind of helps it along. Now for the cheese. So I'm gonna mix the cottage cheese that we've blended up a little bit, and then I'm gonna mix in some of the Italian blended cheese also into this, along with a little bit of garlic powder, salt, and pepper. If you wanted to do a sixth ingredient, this would be the time to add it, and you could add in some chopped spinach or fresh basil here. I am missing the veggie in this dinner, so you could just serve it with a little salad. Okay, and then we're gonna dollop this over the pasta. My dad uses cottage cheese instead of ricotta cheese in his lasagna normally. I think a lot of people do that. So this really isn't weird. It's not really a high-protein hack. People have been doing that a lot. And then we're gonna sprinkle on the rest of the cheese and pop it in the oven. You're gonna cook this at a pretty high temperature. You wanna go about 425 until everything is bubbly and kinda crusty around the edges. Oh my God. Crusty bits all over. Don't look at this and think, like, it's dried out. We want all that on the top, and underneath is all the saucy goodness. I am garnishing with some Italian parsley. Just gonna sneak a bite. Mm, mm. See, everybody would just wanna pick around this pan, but because it's in the sheet pan, everybody's gonna get their own piece like this, and they can do this all they want. You can even eat this meal with your hands. I give you permission. Just makes it more fun. The five-ingredient, high-protein sheet pan pasta bake. This really makes the high-protein pasta seem like regular pasta, I'm telling you. You just kinda changed it up a little bit to give it a more kinda interesting texture. Mm, see? Crusty on the top. That little chewy, cheesy crispiness is to die for. But then it's still really saucy on the bottom. I'm not mad at this at all. Got a little cottage cheese, Italian cheese mixture. Let me see how that is. Mm. You're gonna have to trust me on this one. You wanna make this pasta bake. Even if your goal is not high-protein, it should be your goal to put this on the dinner table sometime this week. I really think these recipes are gonna help you hit your protein and fiber goals this year. Either way, you're putting something delicious on the table. Let me know which one you try first. Mm.