Basil Chicken Zoodles | RV Cooking & Healthy RV Recipes #39

What's up guys? It's Kris, and today I'm going to share with you my chicken basil zoodle recipe. Keep watching. Welcome back to another episode of Healthy RV Cooking, and with all of the rage with zoodles, I have been enjoying some zoodles myself. However, I do not have a fancy spiral gadget. Nobody has space for that in a van, so I'm going to show you how I make zoodles in a van without a spiralizer, and I'm also going to share with you some tips on how I use my prepped chicken to make my meals go a little bit further. So I'm going to run through the ingredients really fast, starting with the chicken. I'm going to show you what I like to do. When I buy chicken for us, I definitely get it in bulk. We eat a lot of chicken, but we also eat a lot of beef, pork, seafood, and eggs. So it's not limited to chicken, but it is a forefront in our daily routine. So I buy the big five-pound packs from Costco, usually two of them at a time, so like 10 pounds a week, and I cook up as much as I can all five pounds, sometimes all 10 pounds at the same time, and I store them in Tupperware containers in the refrigerator in their full-size breast or tender. Now, I do trim down the breasts when I'm cooking them. I just like butterfly them in half so that they cook much quicker. The tenders are even better because you can take them straight from the package right into the pan without breaking them down at all. So I store them in their whole pieces, which keeps them moist for longer. They don't dry out as much as the small pieces do. And then what that allows me to do is when I'm actually preparing a meal, I can have some options as to how I want to present it in the meal. So here's a trick. Rather than eating the same form of chicken every time, sometimes you dice it, sometimes you put it into strips, sometimes you put it in its original form, just leave it in a tender, but you wake it up, you put it in a recipe, and you add unique different flavorings to each meal. So on this meal, I'm going to use dices. So I've already diced this up, and that's how I'm going to use it in this recipe. But as I mentioned, in other recipes, you could do different shapes. So an example is like strips. And just playing with the shapes and presentation will keep you from food boredom. Now, another reason why you want to prep the chicken, not only does it save time when it's time to eat, but it also allows you to have emergency food on the go if you're traveling and you just want something that's already ready and cooked. Eat it just like this, put on some healthy condiments like mustard or salsa or something like that if you don't have time to actually put a recipe together. Another great reason to cook your chicken in bulk is so that it doesn't spoil in your refrigerator. Sometimes if you have a big pack of chicken, it might go bad before you can cook it all. So cook it all up at once and prevent food waste. The next ingredient is zucchini squash. You can use yellow or green. I'm using green today. Other ingredients that are going into this recipe are cherry tomatoes that I have sliced in half, down the center. I have fresh garlic, fresh lemon juice, fresh basil, salt, pepper, and some feta cheese. You could also use parmesan cheese or you could omit the cheese altogether if you are practicing dairy-free lifestyle. Let's get that zucchini into zoodles. As I mentioned, I do not own a spiralizer, so I'm going to use a vegetable peeler. What you want to do is just grab your zucchini, put it on a nice flat surface, get it nice and stable, use your peeler, use heavy pressure. The more pressure, the thicker the slice. So grab the zucchini, put your peeler down, and just get nice strips. And then put the strips aside in a stack. So now that your zucchini is cut into strips about this thick, get them in nice stacks, and we're going to just use our knife skills to cut them into small noodle appearances. So just brush it up on the side of your knife to get them all level, and then get nice thin strips. They're not going to be exactly like a round pasta spaghetti noodle, but they're going to do the trick. They're going to be a similar shape and appearance. So go ahead and do that with all of your zucchini. While my cutting board is out and my prep counter is activated, I'm going to cut my basil into a chiffonade. So just pluck off your leaves, stack them. I like to find the biggest one, the biggest leaves first to form the base, and then work your way to the little ones. The little leaves have a ton of flavor, so do not discredit those ones. And I love fresh basil. I actually, I love fresh basil a thousand million times better than dried basil. I don't know what it is, but the dried basil just doesn't really do it for me. And I could eat an entire stack of this fresh. So I'm going pretty heavy on this. If you don't have a ton of basil, use what you have and do the best you can with that. Once you have it in a stack, you want to roll it into a tight cigar shape and then get your knife out and just do some nice tiny strips. And this method will get you nice little tiny stringlets. You want to save this step for last so that the basil doesn't turn brown before you get to it. And also I'm going to show you my feta cheese quick while we're still in prep mode because when you're working in a tiny corner or an RV, you do all your prep work first before you start cooking. So feta cheese, real feta cheese comes in bricks, in a brine. And it is so much better than the pre-crumbled stuff that you can find in your grocery store. And if you have the opportunity to get this, I don't know if you can see in there, get this brick style. And I'm going to measure out my portion. Anytime I'm dealing with dairy such as cheese or butter or fats like oil or nut butter, I always portion it out just to practice mindful portions. So I use my scale, set it to the gram, and you can see here what this brick looks like. And the flavor on this feta is incredible. So just take out your desired amount and it's ready to use. Now I'm going to clean up my station, get my pan out, and we're going to start cooking. My pan is hot. I'm going to throw in my chicken. And anytime I'm using pre-cooked chicken or meat, I always just wake it up in the pan and just get a little bit of sear on those cut edges because brown food tastes good, looks better. So I'm going to get a little bit of color on the chicken, get it a little bit crispy, and then I'm going to add in oil and garlic. I'm using a lot of garlic. If you don't like a lot of garlic, just use a little bit. So I did measure out my oil that I'm going to use in this, and I put a tiny bit of this oil in the pan just to help that chicken get a good sear on it. And it has browned edges on all the sides, and it looks a million times better than what it looked like when I just cut it up. So make sure you get a little bit of crispness on your chicken when you're reconstituting it. And now I did turn down the heat just a little bit, so now it's on a low heat because I'm going to put that garlic in and I don't want that to burn. So put your oil in, put your garlic in, move it around the pan, and pretty straight away I'm going to get my zucchini noodles in, which I have sitting over here on my board, and just get them right in here. The zucchinis have a lot of water in them, so you're going to hear some sizzle. They're going to shrink down a lot. This right here that I'm making is one serving. It's going to be just for my meal right now. So make sure you move that around right away to get that garlic off the pan, mix it in with the zoodles, and then we're going to start adding in our other ingredients. My tomatoes are going to go in right away. If you like your tomatoes really firm and crunchy, save those and put them in closer to the end because putting them in now, it's going to make them soft, it's going to make them release their juices so that this zoodle dish is a little saucy, and that's what I'm going for. I'm also going to add in salt, just a little bit, and I'm going to add in some fresh lemon juice. So this here is just a little strainer that I use. It's going to collect any seeds that might come out to prevent them from getting into my zoodles. Give it another mix. This comes together very quickly, especially because you don't want those zoodles to overcook. The thinner that they are, the faster they're going to cook, and nobody likes soggy veg, so make sure you don't overcook those zoodles. Throw in the majority of your basil. I'm going to reserve just a little bit of it for a garnish on top, and the same with my feta. I'm going to put most of it in here, reserving just a little bit for a garnish on top. If you are leaving out the cheese, you may want to consider putting in a oregano or thyme, just to give this dish a little bit more flavor. I find that the cheese really does add a nice little zip to it, so I'm putting it in. And when I'm including dairy in my meals, I really just try to be aware of my total daily intake. So I'll have cheese, like, for one meal per day, not all three. So that's another good tip, too. If you are trying to reduce your dairy intake but can't quite give it up, portion it out, have it for one meal a day, and just monitor it. Be aware, be mindful, and then you'll find it going down when you do that. So that's it. I'm going to plate it up. This meal took literally less than 10 minutes because I already had the chicken prepped, and the fresh veg were super quick cooking. Once you cut them up and you know what you're doing with them, it comes together really fast. So I'm going to use my tongs because I'm going to try to arrange these noodles in a pretty way, and I want to leave some of that moisture in the bowl. Another great thing about this recipe is that the vegetables that I'm using, they don't require refrigeration, none of them. The zucchinis I have in my wardrobe closet, and the tomatoes I have over in my produce stand over here, we're actually boondocking right now. So it's a very boondock friendly meal because we don't have all of these vegetables competing for refrigerator space. So always try to find some items that you can fit into your fridge and have outside of your fridge so that you can last a full week or even two weeks with the grocery trip. You probably want some of this liquid. If you don't want all of it, don't put it all in. There is a ton of flavor in there. That's where all the garlic is, and the lemon juice, and the feta goodness. And I'm going to just top this off now with my garnishes. With the garnishes, a little goes a long way. It looks much more beautiful with just a tiny little sprinkle versus a huge mound. So you don't need to reserve much. You want most of it to be inside of the dish. Voila! So for the full principle recipe, check out my blog ireneironfitness.com, and you can eat like a champion no matter where you are. This is healthy, it's fresh, it smells so good, and you're going to enjoy every bite. When you're enjoying what you're eating, you can stick to your meal plan, and you can stick to eating healthy because it doesn't feel like punishment. This is how it should feel. It should feel good. You should feel good when you're done eating it, and you should enjoy it. Thanks so much for watching. If you like my recipes, hit that thumbs up, hit that subscribe button, drop me a comment on something that you would like to see, or if you have any questions, and catch you next time.