This Mexican Chicken and Cauliflower Rice Traybake recipe is a shining example of a meal that packs a real flavour punch, but is also very good for the waistline! Perfect for this time of year when we’ve over-indulged ever so slightly.
Happy New year! Hope you all had a great Christmas and ate loads of yummy food. How is it that time of year again where most of us are trying to be healthy?
As much as we all find January a hard month recovering from the festive period it’s a great way to start the year with a bit of a health kick. We even force ourselves to eat that Christmas chocolate a little at a time and make it last until March! Dean finds that very hard.
In other news, we’ve started this year off as an engaged couple! 😊 Yes, he finally got down on one knee and popped the question and YES there was food involved, he had a biscuit iced with “will you marry me?” on it. Of course, I said yes! 😍
Right, back to the healthy eating! We’ve started off the month pretty well, getting lots more vegetables into our diet and replacing those carbs with healthy, hearty vegetables, cooked in interesting ways. We’re making our meals tasty with lots of fresh herbs, chillies and lots of spice — adding heaps of flavour.
We have LOADS of Mexican food at home, we much prefer to cook it ourselves rather than go to a Mexican restaurant (also partly because there aren’t any decent ones near us!). We came up with this dish together as we are trying to cut down the carbs. Cauliflower rice is a great alternative — it’s so tasty, easy and affordable to make, you really can’t go wrong.
We had a bit of inspiration from a food magazine where we saw a chicken traybake which got us thinking and we came up with this Mexican Chicken and Cauliflower Rice Traybake version.
It’s such a vibrant dish, so full of flavour that you tend to forget you’re eating cauliflower instead of rice. I really recommend giving it a go. We served ours with sour cream, guacamole and padron peppers, which finished it off beautifully!
Mexican Chicken and Cauliflower Rice
Ingredients
Chicken marinade
- 6 chicken thighs skinless and boneless
- 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
- 1 garlic clove crushed
- 1 lime juiced and zest
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp chilli powder
- 1 tsp Sweet smoked paprika
Cauliflower rice
- 1 medium cauliflower
- 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 tsp chilli powder
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 handful fresh coriander chopped (extra to serve)
- 1 squeeze lime
Other
- 10 shallots peeled and quartered
- 1 red pepper cubed
- 120 g tinned sweetcorn
- 200 g tinned red kidney beans
- 1 fresh red chilli sliced
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F / gas 4 and then cut any visible fat off the chicken thighs. Mix together the marinade ingredients then coat the chicken, set aside.
- Add about 1/2 tbsp of oil to a large tray and spread evenly. Quarter the shallots and cube the pepper and add to the tray. Place the chicken on top and bake for 45 minutes.
- While the chicken is cooking, cut up the cauliflower into florets. Place the cauliflower into your food processor in batches and whizz it up, not for very long as you don’t want it to be too fine. Once you have whizzed all your cauliflower, add all the spices and stir in. Set aside.
- Take the tray out of the oven and add the sweetcorn. Cook for another 15-20 minutes.
- Take the chicken out of the tray and place on to a plate. Add the cauliflower rice to the tray and gently stir in, along with the red kidney beans. Mix everything together then place the chicken back on top of the rice then put back in the oven a final 10 minutes.
- Take out the oven and sprinkle with coriander and sliced red chillies. Serve with sour cream, guacamole and padron peppers. Enjoy!
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