First Recipe- Super Easy Greek-Style Chicken with Orzo!

Alright. So you might be thinking to yourself: this sounds complicated. Believe me when I first stumbled upon this recipe I thought the same. But, I had chicken, orzo, some tomatoes and some spices and I wanted to make a phenomenal Mediterranean dinner, and this recipe did that for me. I just want to clarify that this is NOT my recipe but that I found it on the blog, The Mediterranean Dish and I wanted to give it a shot! So here's what I did and how it turned out:

First, I made a spice blend which consisted of: 

2 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp all-natural sweet paprika

1 tsp all-natural coriander

1 tsp each kosher salt and black pepper

*I doubled the amount of chicken so I actually ended up doubling all of these measurements and subbed out dried oregano for dried basil because that's all that we had.*

At first I was a little skeptical because paprika can be super overpowering but I went with it...

The recipe called for chicken thighs but all I had were chicken breasts so again, I improvised (your gonna see this a lot throughout this recipe because it was a Thursday night and we had pretty much eaten our way through the entire fridge and pantry). Nevertheless, I cut the chicken breasts in half, doused them in lemon juice and coated each piece in the spice blend. 

This is what it looked like once I did that (also sorry for the pic of raw chicken but I just thought it would give you a good idea of how much spice I used, IT WAS A LOT. 

After that, I let the chicken sit for around twenty minutes and prepped my veggies. Though the recipe called for a lot less onion and red bell peppers, I wanted to add more since I only had one yellow bell pepper and I felt that the dish needed more veggies. I also crushed A LOT of garlic (like six cloves) and got that ready to go.

Once that had been prepped and everything was ready to go I started cooking! 

I rammed the burner up to medium-high heat, got my olive oil hot and started cooking my chicken. I think that this was key to getting a really nice color on the chicken. The heat should be higher than you think it needs to be to get a really nice crust. Also, make sure that you use a dutch oven or a pot that can go in the oven at a really high temperature (NO PLASTIC) or you'll end up with a fire and a melted pot. 

Once the chicken was cooked all the way through, I took it out of the pot, added my garlic, peppers and onions and a little bit of veggie broth (which was not apart of the recipe, but I wanted to deglaze the pan a little bit) and got all of my veggies cooked through. I also seasoned with salt and pepper and added a little bit of the extra spice blend that I used on the chicken to add more flavor. 

After that, I added my orzo, canned tomatoes, veggie broth and more of that spice blend, bringing everything to a boil. I also added some instant brown rice because I didn't have much orzo and I was worried it wouldn't be enough, that actually turned out to be a great move. 

After about three minutes of boiling all of those ingredients together, I put my chicken back in the pot and put it all in the oven at 350 degrees for around 20/25 minutes. Though the recipe says to add slices of green bell pepper to the top, I didn't have any so I just skipped that step. A word of advice: have peppers in the house before making this dish. Though it shouldn't make too much of a difference if you don't have any (because I didn't have any accept for that one yellow one). 

                   After it came out of the oven it looked like this:

The color of the sauce darkened and everything looked really yummy and browned. 

I finished the dish off by crumbling so feta cheese on the top and adding some fresh cilantro. I also roasted up some broccoli and toasted some tortillas for a pita-esque compliment to the dish. I really wish that we had pita in the house when I made this but these were actually a great substitute. I also whipped up a yogurt dip with some fat-free yogurt, cumin, lemon juice, and free cilantro. We also had some great hummus from Trader Joe's so I put that on the table too, which was a huge hit!

Overall this dish was PHENOMENAL. Given that it only took me around an hour to make I feel like it was a great way of cooking mediterranean food on a weeknight. The side dishes were also lovely and the feta on the top added a great creaminess. My only critique was that cooking the chicken did take longer than expected which was slightly annoying. But overall, being able to cook it all in one pot was really nice. Definitely make this if you want a cheaper, easier, and really delicious version of mediterranean food. Plus you'll probably have leftovers for the next day, which is always a great thing!