I’ve given up on my dream of summertime grilling, and I’m sticking to recipes I can make indoors. I still want to keep to a summery menu though, and this Chimichurri Chicken Green Beans Skillet seems like a great compromise. I associate chimichurri with grilling steaks, so having it with chicken will be new for me. I’m honestly wondering why I never thought to pair the two before. Chicken breasts can get boring, but there’s nothing boring about chimichurri. Plus adding green beans makes this a complete meal, and I love these types of recipes!
I cannot express with words how much my family and I loved this Chimichurri Chicken Green Beans Skillet. It’s far from boring and this sauce is just heaven. Great dish for weeknight dinners!
The Ingredients
The list of ingredients for this recipe was medium length, and I had a few of the staples in my pantry (oil, vinegar, and spices). That left me to shop for the meat and produce, but none of it was unusual or hard to find at my regular grocery store.
The Process
Although this is a skillet meal, I did need two pans to make it–a large pot to boil the green beans and my 12-inch cast-iron skillet.
I started by making the chimichurri sauce while the water for the green beans was heating. My first instinct was to make it in my mini-prep, but I wasn’t sure it would be big enough. I ended up using my food processor, but I think the mini-prep would have worked.
The water was boiling by the time the chimichurri was done, and I boiled the green beans for 5 minutes (I like them on the well-done side). That gave me plenty of time to season the chicken breasts so they would be ready to pan fry.
The green beans were pretty close to done after boiling for 5 minutes, so I only fried them in the skillet for 3 minutes. After removing them from the pan, I fried the chicken breasts for 4 minutes per side.
Here is how my time was spent making this recipe:
- 15 minutes to prep
- 17 minutes to cook
- 32 minutes total
Although this was a quick meal, the recipe listed a total time of 20 minutes, so this went over by 12 minutes. Also, the chicken breasts were nicely seared on the outside, but I found out when I cut into the thicker part that they weren’t fully cooked. The instructions did say 3-4 minutes per side or until cooked through, so that was my fault for not checking (shoulda used my meat thermometer!).
Pounding them thinner with a meat mallet before cooking might have made the 8 minutes enough. As they were, I’d estimate an extra 5-10 minutes would have cooked them through.
