Chicken Creole

For Mother’s Day this year, I volunteered Scott and I to do all of the cooking.

Since we were coming in from Tampa, I knew we only had a little bit of time to put dinner together for a lot of people (twelve).

To this day, one of my favorite requests for dinner is Shrimp Creole.  I love the spicy, sweet combination and found something similar that sparked my interest from SparkRecipes.  Although their recipe says 20 minute Chicken Creole, I assure you there’s a little more time into it than that…

I also assure you that the 45 minutes it took for our version was well worth it.

Chicken Creole

Ingredients

4 medium chicken breasts halves, skinned, boned and cut into 1″ strips

1 can (14 oz.) tomatoes, diced

1 cup low-sodium chili sauce

1 large green pepper, chopped

1 large red pepper, chopped

1/4 cup onion, chopped

1 cup sliced mushrooms

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 cloves minced garlic

1 tbsp fresh basil or 1 tsp dried

1 tbsp fresh parsley or 1 tsp dried

1/4 tbsp fresh crushed red pepper

1/4 tsp salt

prep time: 30 minutes

cook time: 15 minutes

servings: 4

*Note: In the pictures, you might notice we tripled the recipe to feed twelve.

Directions

Start by chopping all of your vegetables.  It easier to prep everything first, before starting anything on the skillet.

We used fresh basil and fresh parsley, so we chopped both with our vegetables.  You can skip this step by using dried herbs.

The recipe called for one large green pepper, and we also added red.

Spray a deep skillet with nonstick spray coating.

Preheat pan over high heat.

Cook chicken in hot skillet, stirring for 3-5 minutes per side, or until no longer pink.

(Since we tripled the recipe, we had to cook two separate batches of chicken and put the first batch to the side while cooking the second.)

Next, we added mushrooms and Worcestershire sauce to the recipe.  Although it isn’t necessary, it added a great flavor to the dish.

Make sure all of your vegetables are chopped and ready to go, then set to the side.

Since my mother has an allergy to garlic and onions, we made her a separate batch.  We substituted chopped with pearl onions so she could eat around them and still get the flavor, then left out the garlic and chili sauce.

Once again, we tweaked the recipe a little by pulling the chicken apart with our (clean) fingers, instead of serving the 1 inch strips.

Now that everything is prepped and ready, it’s time to start cooking it together in the skillet.

Start with the chicken, then add tomatoes and their juice, chili sauce, garlic, basil, parsley, crushed red pepper and salt.

Add the peppers, celery, onion, and mushrooms (if you chose to include them).

Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.

We transferred our creole into a large crock pot to take over to my parents’ house.  Once there, we turned the crock pot on low to heat the creole and served it on top of Jasmine rice.

You can choose to serve it over rice, noodles, or even on it’s own.  I enjoyed the leftovers the next day for lunch and didn’t miss the rice one bit!

What’s your favorite kind of creole?