Today’s conversation about easy and healthy weeknight dinners is sponsored by Frigidaire Gallery®.

Do you have a great idea for an easy weeknight meal? You don’t even need a full fledged recipe, just a creative suggestion for getting something to your family’s dinner table and you have a chance to win a Frigidaire Gallery® appliance. Head on over and check out the Quick & Creative Weeknight Challenge! 3 winners will be selected to win a featured Fridgidaire Gallery appliance along with having their idea developed into a recipe featured on Frigidaire.com.

You know what I really stink at? Side dishes. I can rock a main entree like nobody else but when it comes to making sure that I have healthy accompaniments to go with the the star of the show, I fall seriously short.

Since Tim and I have been eating more healthfully and counting Weight Watchers points, I’ve been particularly focused on making sure we have healthy light side dishes to fill out our dinner plates. On busy weeknights, I find that to be a particular challenge.

When I was approached by Frigidaire Gallery® appliances to share the news about their Quick & Creative Weeknight Meal Challenge, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try my hand at solving this problem and help find a way to get at least 2 veggies on a plate in a typical weeknight dinner.

If I were to consider the time saving features of the Frigidaire Gallery® Double Wall Oven I’d be most attracted to how it preheats in just minutes and has a convection setting for faster multi-rack baking.

My mom had a double oven and I’ve always been envious of her ability to make dishes without the worry of temperatures being equal. I feel like any time I find a yummy veggie side dish, it requires baking at a temperature that is totally different from my chicken!

So to challenge myself to get two healthy side dishes on my plate, it was a freeing experience to not think twice about the temps of the recipes I wanted to make! I love that you could make one item in the top oven and the other in the bottom.

I combined two of our favorite things for this dish: mustardy lemon chicken for me and roasted potatoes for Tim. To up the healthfulness of it, I added a big bag of frozen green beans.

Because the potatoes take longer to bake, I preheated the oven and prepped them first. While they were busy roasting, I moved onto prepping the sauce and the chicken.

One of my new favorite methods for cooking chicken involves browning it up briefly on the stove top, pouring a sauce over it, and letting it finish it’s baking inside the oven. The result is an extremely tender and juicy chicken that requires very little additional fat or oil.

While the bite sized chicken chunks were sautéing in a small bit of olive oil, I mixed up the sauce using dijon mustard, fresh lemon juice, fresh garlic, a little chicken stock, and a packet of Italian dressing mix.

When the chicken had been browned on both sides, I poured the sauce over the top and brought it to a bubble.

Then I dumped the package of green beans over the top and popped the whole pan into the oven.

The chicken finished at the same time as the potatoes were ready.

Just before serving, I tossed the chicken and beans together with the sauce so that everything was nice and coated. To keep this under 10 Weight Watchers points per serving, I omitted using any kind of sauce thickener like corn starch. It’s a nice juicy, drizzly sauce. If you’re not concerned about points, adding a little corn starch would make this into a lovely pan gravy for your chicken and for dipping the crispy potatoes.

For 1 serving of the chicken, potatoes, and beans, the total came to only 9 points: 6 for the chicken, 3 for the potatoes. Green beans are 0 points. It made for a warm and filling meal that I could easily make during most of our weeknights.

Chicken in lemon mustard sauce with roasted potatoes and green beans

Author: Peanut Blossom

Print Recipe

Scale

Ingredients

For the Chicken:
1.5 pounds of chicken tenderloins, cut into chunks
juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp dijon mustard
3/4 packet of Italian Dressing mix
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp olive oil
1 package of frozen green beans
For the potatoes:
24 oz small red potatoes, washed and cut into quarters
1 small onion, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 Italian Dressing mix (the leftovers from the packet you use for the chicken)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Toss the potatoes and onion slices with the olive oil and seasonings. Spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet and roast for 40 minutes, tossing half way through.
Toss the chicken with 1 tbsp flour to coat. Heat up an oven-proof sauté pan with 1 tbsp olive oil. Brown the chicken in a single layer for 3 minutes until crispy. Turn and brown the other side for an additional 3 minutes.
While the chicken is browning, combine the chicken stock, lemon juice, mustard, seasoning packet, and garlic in a measuring cup.
When the chicken has finished browning, pour the sauce mix over the top of the chicken and bring to a bubble.
Top the chicken with frozen green beans and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.
Toss the chicken and beans to coat with sauce before serving.